Women Between Two Worlds: Midlife Reflections on Work and Family (Women In The Political Economy)

WOMEN BETWEEN

Two WORILDS -0-

IN THE SERIES

Women in the Political Economy

edited by Ronnie J. Steinberg

WOMEN BETWEEN T\VO

WORLDS --0--

Midlife Reflections on Work and Family ~IYRA

TEMPLE

DITNNERSTEKN

UNIVERSITY

PHILADELPHIA

PRESS

Temple University Press, Philadelphia 19122 Copyright © 1992 by Temple University. All rights reserved Published 1992 Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984 § Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dinnerstein, Myra, 1934Women between two worlds: midlife reflections on work and family / Myra Dinnerstein. p. cm. - (Women in the political economy) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-87722-884-1 (cl). ISBN O-87722-885-X (pbk.) 1. Married women-Employment-United States-Case studies. 2. Middle class women-Employment-United States-Case studies. 3. Work and family-United States-Case studies. I. Title. II. Series. HD6055 .2. U6D56 1992 331.43'0973-dc2o 91- u81 5

For Leonard

CONTENTS ---0---

Preface

lX

Acknowledgments

Xlll

Study Participants

xv

CHAPTER I:

Introduction

CHAPTER 2:

Growing Up Female: The Possible and the

1

Appropriate

II

CHAPTER

3:

Becoming Adult Women

35

CHAPTER

4:

At Home

65

CHAPTER

5:

From Housewives to Career Women

85

CHAPTER

6:

The Persistence of Domesticity

II9

CHAPTER

7:

Between Two Worlds

149

CHAPTER

8:

Conclusion

179

Notes

187

Bibliography

205

Index

21 9

PREFACE ---0---

This book examines the choices and compromises of a generation of women who came of age after World War II. It tracks the experiences of twenty-two of these women from childhood to midlife, including their evolution from traditional wives and mothers to women combining careers with family life. The lives of middle-class women of this generation have been split between two worlds. As they were growing up, traditional expectations and limited opportunities seemed to make marriage and motherhood inevitable choices, particularly because there was little encouragement to think about careers or professional life. But when they were in their thirties, a dramatic shift occurred; the women's movement and expanding opportunities in the workplace presented options for them that had not been available to their mothers. Now it was considered appropriate for women to have ambitions and to act on them-and the women described in this book were among those who did. I decided to focus on this age group, women born between 1936 and 1944, because their bifurcated experience makes them a particularly rich source for examining the ways in which individual lives are intertwined with larger historical and cultural developments. Their life histories vividly illustrate both the extent to which women's aspirations have been shaped by the structure of opportunity and prevailing ideologies and the ways that women experienced and shaped processes of social change. Scholars have analyzed this generation's formative experiences in LX

x

Preface

the 1950S by focusing primarily on the ideology of domesticity, which permeated the culture in the post-World War II years. The experiences of this group demonstrate the significance of marriage and heterosexuality in defining normative female identity.! For women growing up in the postwar period, the cultural mandate to marry was an overwhelming factor in delimiting their ambitions and their choices, and for many, such as those described in this book, marriage and family life have continued to have this effect. The effects of marriage and heterosexuality become clear by looking at what happened when, as married women with children, the study participants became involved in graduate school or careers. To maintain their marriages, the study participants had to make a variety of compromises that affected both their family lives and their careers. This book describes the variety of strategies they adopted as they tried to walk a fine line between traditional expectations and their own needs. My research deliberately involved only those in long-term marriages, to show the kind of gender relations required to sustain relationships when wives enter professional employment and to explore the tensions that many women experience while juggling the demands of family life and career. Including divorced women would have offered a view of what happens when negotiating strategies break down. But determining in retrospect whether marriages broke up because of tensions between family life and career or because of an amalgam of other reasons seemed an almost impossible task. However, we can look at how such tensions can cause marriage breakdowns by examining those marriages that, while intact now, remain at risk because of conflict over family and career issues. The contemporary experience of white, middle-class women in dual-career marriages has been well described in a number of recent works. 2 This study provides the historical grounding for these contemporary struggles by looking closely at the strategies such women have used in their lifelong process of negotiation and accommodation to reconcile personal ambitions with traditional notions of femininity. An examination of these negotiations raises questions about

Preface

Xl

the effectiveness of individual strategies in the face of resistance by social institutions such as the family and the workplace. This book supports the view of sociologists, psychologists, and historians who have found that childhood experiences and socialization alone do not determine the course of adult life. Instead, adults continue to develop new values, beliefs, and aspirations as they encounter changing historical and social circumstances. The life histories of study participants demonstrate, however, that traditional expectations and values continue to influence women's possibilities and sense of self as well. All of the women interviewed for this project were white, and while a few of them came from working-class backgrounds, as adults all of them had reached middle-class status as a result of education and marriage. Concentrating on white, middle-class women provides detailed accounts of the interaction between the prevailing ideologies and personal choice while at the same time demonstrating how race and class privilege interact with gender oppression. Throughout this book it is clear that the participants have had access to a range of alternatives and resources that testify to their race and class position. That even this privileged group has been circumscribed in its aspirations and accomplishments attests to the continuing power of gender in defining lives. Respondents were drawn primarily from one community, a midsized western city. To find out whether a larger and more cosmopolitan setting would provide variation in experiences, I interviewed six women from two large midwestern cities. I found that early experiences of participants, many of whom grew up in small towns, showed more similarities than differences. A greater variety of job opportunities existed in the two larger cities, but the personal and family issues the women faced were similar in all settings. Recruitment of respondents took place through notices placed in professional newsletters, flyers circulated by women's organizations, and word of mouth. I also received faculty lists from two universities and sent notices to all women faculty in the desired cohort. In a preselection process, I interviewed approximately thirty-five

X II

Preface

potential participants by telephone to ascertain whether they met the study requirements of birth cohort, at least three years home with children, intact marriage, and professional school or career involvement. To insure confidentiality, all names have been changed and every effort has been made to eliminate identifying remarks. Study participants were each interviewed for three to five hours, using an open-ended questionnaire. Follow-up telephone conversations helped to clarify points where necessary. The questionnaire served as a guide to insure that participants addressed the same issues. I explained that I was interested in hearing about the transition from traditional wives and mothers to career women. I began with some detailed questions about their early lives. Then, for the most part, they took charge of the narrative, relating their stories in their own chronological order. I intervened only to ask for more detail, to clarify points, and, at the end, to address any issues from the questionnaire not covered. This research has relied on the testimony of wives as its major source for the discussion of family life. The literature on family power shows that wives and husbands never view family dynamics in the same way. Husbands may have a different view of the amount of their participation in housework, for example, or the kinds of support that they have offered their wives. The intent of this book, however, has not been to arrive at the "truth" of couples' shared reality-if such a thing is possible-but rather to capture the respondents' perceptions of that reality. It is their understanding of what was happening that determined how they made their decisions and shaped the kinds of negotiations and bargains they were willing to undertake.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ---0---

First, I want to thank the twenty-two women who spoke so openly and movingly about their lives. I also want to thank the friends and colleagues who have taken the time and effort to read this book and offer their valuable critiques. Trudy Mills and Rose Weitz were two of the first readers who helped set me on the right track. My gratitude goes to them and to Paula England, Kay Kavanagh, Liz Kennedy, Pat MacCorquodale, Susan Philips, Robert Schulzinger, and Chris Tanz for their criticism. Lesley Ann Beneke skillfully copyedited the manuscript, and Lynn Fleischman thoroughly reviewed the myriad changes in the final version. The Women's Studies community at the University of Arizona has been a source of great support and riotous good fun. Together we have tried to change the world and have emerged only slightly dented. Women's Studies has been blessed by a marvelous staff, who have made our lives not only more manageable but also much more pleasant and fun-filled. I give my love and thanks to Mary Contreras, Roxane Martell Jones, who brought great care and skill to the typing of this manuscript, Maureen Roen, and Jo Ann Troutman. Every book needs a cheering section, and this book certainly has had one. Heather Alberts, inveterate optimist and dear friend, insisted that it could and would be done, and ultimately, swept away by her contagious enthusiasm, I believed her. Karen Anderson used her exceptional critical and analytical skills to read and reread the XZlt

XlV

Acknowledgments

manuscript; this book could not have been completed without her support and faith. Julie Dinnerstein gave me not only the benefit of her exceptionally careful editing, insightful critique, and enthusiasm at every step of the process but also the great joy that a feminist mother experiences from having such a committed feminist daughter. She and my beloved son, Andrew Dinnerstein, continue to be loving presences in my life. For Leonard Dinnerstein-husband, friend, unflagging supporter-my love and gratitude know no bounds. For over three decades he has been there, cheering me on. He is that fabled husband that every woman needs. He does not talk about "helping out" and "sharing"; he does it. In fact, he has done the lion's share of the domestic work and child rearing throughout our married lives. He has filled my life with love, and it is a deep pleasure to dedicate this book to him.

STUDY PARTICIPANTS ---0---

ANN GOETZ (lawyer): Born 1942. Married Vic, computer business executive, 1966. Son, 1967; daughter, 1970. Math teacher before marriage. J.D., 1979. BARBARA FLOOD (assistant professor of sociology): Born 1944. Married Tim, businessman, 1965. Son, 1970. Returned to graduate school, 1974. Ph.D., Sociology, 1979. BETSY JOHNSON (business owner): Born, 1941. Married Steve, lawyer, 1965. Daughter, 1966; son, 1969. M.A., Counseling. Returned to paid work, 1973. CLAUDIA McINTOSH (artist): Born 1940. Married Eric, physician, 1961. Son, 1965; daughter, 1967. Returned to college, 1973. B.A., 1978. CYNTHIA CHESSMAN (writer): Born 1938. Married Joe, professor, 1957. Daughters, 1962 and 1964; son, 1967. B.A., 1962. Returned to paid work as editor and writer, '972. DEBBIE SAMSON (assistant professor of African history): Born 1943. Married Jeff, real estate salesman, 1965. Daughters, 1969 and 1971; son, 1985. Returned to graduate school, 1973. Began paid work full-time, 1977. Ph.D., African History, 1981. DOROTHY WITHERS (lawyer; wanted to be scientist): Born 1941. Married Sam, professor, 1959. Twin daughters, 1965. M.A., Science, 1963; J.D. 1974. EVELYN MURPHY (department store program administrator): Born 1936. Married Bob, school teacher, 1954. Daughters, 1956, 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1964. Returned to paid work, 1969.

xv

xvt

Study Participants

FRANCES MARTIN (professor of English): Born 1937. Married AI, professor, 1957. Sons, 1959 and 1961. Ph.D., 1968. GAIL NASH (adjunct professor of economics): Born 1940. Married Ken, professor, 1964. Son, 1971. Returned to school, 1975. Ph.D., 198I. HELEN BLAIR (administrator of adult education): Born 1940. MarriedJohn, businessman, 1959. Daughters, 1960, 1962, and 1973; son, 1964. Began college, 1974. B.A., 1977. Returned to paid work, 1978. M.A., Counseling, 1982. JANET MASON (assistant professor of nursing): Born 1937. Married Neil, professor, 1957. Daughters, 1960, 1962, and 1965; son, 1969. Second bachelor's degree, in Nursing, 1973; M.A., 1977; Ph.D., 1985. J 0 BUTLER (physician): Born 1942. Married George, physician, 1963. Dropped out of medical school, 1965. Daughters, 1966, 1968, 1975, and 1980. Returned to medical school, 1970. M.D., 1973· JULIA LEE (lawyer; wanted to be professor): Born 1940. Married Gordon, professor, 1962. Completed all but the dissertation for the Ph.D. Daughters, 1965 and 1969. J.D., 1983. KAREN MASTERS (assistant professor of nursing): Born 1944. Married Jerry, sales manager, 1964. Sons, 1966 and 1969; daughter, 1970. B.A., Women's Studies, 1975; M.A., Women's Studies, 1976; M.A., Nursing, 1978; Ph.D., Nursing, 1981. MARILYN GOLD (administrator of social services agency): Born 1936. Married Dave, business owner, 1958. Son, 1960; daughters, 1962 and 1967. M.A., Counseling, 1971. NANCY RICHARDSON (banker): Born 1940. Married Tom, lawyer, 1960. Sons, 1961 and 1967. Returned to paid work, 1976. RUTH FULLER (psychologist): Born 1939. Married Arnold, lawyer, 1960. Daughters, 1964 and 1966. Returned to graduate school, 1973. M.A., Counseling, 1977; Ph.D., Psychology, 1982. SANDRA THOMPSON (engineer): Born 1944. Married Bill, business owner, 1964. Dropped out of architecture school, 1964. Sons, 1969 and 1971. Returned to work, 1974. B.S., Engineering, 1983.

Study Participants

XVZl

STEPHANIE BROWN (administrator of art museum): Born 1941. Married Dennis, professor, 1958. Daughter, 1959; son, 1962. B.A., Fine Arts, 1977; second B.A., Art History, 1978. Returned to paid work, 1978. SUSAN LARSON (administrator of adult education): Born 1941. Married Frank, sales manager, 1961. Sons, 1962, 1963, and 1965. B.A., 1962. Returned to paid work part-time in 1970 and fulltime in 1977. VIRGINIA REED (assistant professor of economics): Born 1940. Married Michael, sales manager, 1961. Dropped out of architecture school, 1959. Daughters, 1962, 1965, and 1968. Returned to school part-time, 1973. M.A., Economics, 1976; Ph.D., Economics, 1984.

Gail Nash

Frances Martin

Dorothy Withers Evelyn Murphy

Claudia McIntosh Cynthia Chessman Debbie Samson

Betsy Johnson

Adjunct Professor

Ph.D.

Lawyer J.D. Ph.D. Assistant Professor M.A. Business Owner Artist B.A. Writer B.A. Assistant Ph.D. Professor Lawyer J.D. Administrator, None Department Store Professor Ph.D.

Barbara Flood

Ann Goetz

Degree

Profession

Name

TABLE 1.

Ken

Al

Sam Bob

Joe Jeff yes

yes yes

Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife

Time-Outer

Long-Termer Long-Termer Time-Outer

Time-Outer

Steve Eric

Time-Outer

Vic Tim

Time-Outer

Nontradi- Nontraditional tional Identity Identity Attitude at End of at Time of toward Husband High School Marriage Being Home

Profile of Study Participants

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator Negotiator

Accommodator

Accommodator Accommodator

Negotiator

Accommodator

Accommodator

Getting Help with Housework

Assistant Professor Administrator, Social Services Agency Banker

Karen Masters

Engineer

Administrator, Art Museum Administrator, Adult Education Assistant Professor

Sandra Thompson

Stephanie Brown

Virginia Reed

Susan Larson

Psychologist

Nancy Richardson Ruth Fuller

Marilyn Gold

J.D.

Lawyer

Julia Lee

Ph.D.

B.A.

B.A.

B.S.

None Ph.D.

M.A.

Ph.D.

M.D.

Ph.D.

M.A.

Physician

Administrator, Adult Education Assistant Professor

Jo Butler

Janet Mason

Helen Blair

Michael

Frank

Dennis

Bill

Tom Arnold

Dave

Jerry

Gordon

George

Neil

John

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife Discontented Housewife

Long-Termer

Discontented Housewife Discontented Housewife

Discontented Housewife Discontented Housewife

Time-Outer

Long-Termer

Accommodator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Negotiator

Accommodator

Equalizer

Equalizer

WOMEN BETWEEN

Two WORLDS -0-

CHAPTER I

KNTRODUCTiON ---0---

At the time they were interviewed in the mid-1980s the twentytwo women described in this book were all in their forties and had traveled far from the traditional world in which they had grown up and in which they had spent their early adulthood. Most striking, given their traditional upbringing, was the extent to which they had become committed to careers. They numbered among them seven college faculty, five administrators, three lawyers, an artist, a business owner, a doctor, a banker, an engineer, a psychologist, and a writer. They had accumulated eight Ph.D.s, three J.D.s, one M.D., and three M.A.s. With two exceptions, each of them had at least a bachelor's degree. Most of the graduate degrees, including two of the master's, all of the Ph.D.s andJ.D.s, and the medical degree had been earned after the women had stayed at home with their children, as had five of the bachelor's degrees. Little wonder that Susan Larson,1 reflecting on her metamorphosis from full-time housewife to the director of a statewide educational program, describes her generation as having "our feet in two worlds." This book describes the lives of these women who have lived in two worlds, including their transition from one world to the other, by following them through their adolescence in the 1950S, college in the late 1950S and early 1960s, their mothering of small children from the 1950S through the 1970s, and their shift from full-time housewives to committed professionals in the 1970S and 1980s.

I

2

CHAPTER 1 THE

POSTWAR

YEARS

The twenty-two women in this study, growing up in the years after World War II, faced a paradoxical time. There was an insistent emphasis on marriage and motherhood at the same time that the increasing numbers of women moving into the workplace and into college indicated that broader options were available. 2 Study participants found other ambiguities in their own families. They observed that their mothers were not content with their circumscribed, traditional roles. 3 Yet their mothers seemed unable or unwilling to do anything to change their lives. Such contradictions permeated the early years of those in this book, influencing their ideas about what was possible and appropriate for young women to be and do. After the war, there appeared to be an urgent demand for a sense of stability in a world that many experienced as a threatening place. Internationally, the cold war and the specter of the atomic bomb had ominous potential for worldwide disaster. Nationally, the success of Senator Joseph McCarthy in his crusade against communists reflected the fear of subversion of American morality.4 Most people wanted a return to normality and security, and women, married and caring for the family, appeared to be the perfect symbol and necessary prerequisite to achieve this goal. In the late 1940S and 1950S, shifts in demographic indicators reflected a renewed interest in family life with a full-time wife and mother at its center. Records were set for numbers of marriages, the birth rate exploded into a baby boom, and divorces increased at a slower rate than previously.s An ideology of domestic bliss was promoted relentlessly through women's magazines, which enumerated the satisfactions of family and home life, and in television sitcoms like "Father Knows Best."6 The pressure on women to marry was, in many ways, nothing new. Throughout this country's history, being appropriately female has meant being a wife and mother, particularly for the white and middle-class.? What was different in the post-World War II period was not the expectation that women should marry, but the intensity with which this was promoted. After the war there was a concern that traditional gender relationships had been endangered

Introduction

3

during the war and continued to be at risk. Women had demonstrated independence, including sexual freedom, during the war. That new independence, combined with expanding work and educational opportunities after the war, aroused fears that customary relationships between the sexes might be changed forever. 8 This anxiety, Wini Breines has suggested, accounts for the incredible stridency of the postwar ideology that prescribed a limited, domestic position for women. 9 The alarm about gender identities and a fear that the distinction between the sexes was eroding permeated the postwar years. Concerns focused on women who were in the work force, particularly "career women," and on those who remained unmarried. In Life magazine's I956 special issue on "The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles," a panel of five psychiatrists criticized both women and men for "losing their identities." According to the psychiatrists, "The emerging American woman tends to be assertive and exploitative. The emerging American man tends to be passive and irresponsible." As a result both are suffering from "sexual ambiguity." Life called the prevalence of increasingly feminized men and masculinized women, "a disease ... associated with changes in the status and activities of men and women." The increase in the number of women working was called its "gross symptom." 10 As the psychiatrists quoted in Life magazine made clear, the alarm over gender relations also included a concern that traditional notions of masculinity were being eroded. A series of books, including William Whyte's The Organization Man and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd, described the postwar emergence of a different kind of masculine personality, one better suited for getting along in the large bureaucratic organizations that increasingly characterized the business world. This new man, far different from the male stereotype of the rugged individualist, responded to the demands of peers and bosses and raised fears that men were becoming more feminine. ll The challenge all this seemed to represent to traditional gender definitions was countered, not only by positive models and exhortations toward marriage and family life, but also by threats of being labeled deviant. This was no small threat. The desire to behave in a way that is considered appropriate to one's sex appears to be one of the

4

CHAPTER I

earliest imperatives of human beings. l2 The act of demonstrating to others your femininity or masculinity by the actions and activities you undertake has been termed "doing gender" by Can dance West and Don H. Zimmerman." 13 Failure to behave in a way considered suitable for your sex carries with it the threat of societal disapproval. In the postwar period the appropriate way of "doing gender" was through marriage and heterosexual relationships. Not conforming to that heterosexual standard could make life very difficult. Throughout the 1950S homosexuals had to deal with virulent attacks by zealots who viewed them, along with communists, as a threat to the security and moral fiber of the country. A crusade against "sexual perverts" became a part of Senator McCarthy's wellpublicized campaign against subversion. As a result, many military personnel and government employees were fired for their "deviance." 14 Less violent but still effective in maintaining heterosexual boundaries was the labeling of women who might have plans for a future other than a conventional one as unfeminine, neurotic, unhappy, and dangerous to husband and children. Whether done humorously as Sloan Wilson, author of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, did in an article poking fun at "the woman in the gray flannel suit" in the New York Times,l> or more seriously as did others, the message was quite clear; women who chose employment over marriage, or with marriage, would damage both thems~lves and others. Wilson painted a pitiful picture of what life was like for the single career woman, offering a warning to all who considered that choice. They may have looked glamorous on the street but most. lived in lonely little walk-up apartments, and their social life consisted largely of going to the movies with girls like themselves. One girl I knew used to sneak into the office to work late at night, simply because she had nothing else to do. l6 Freudian therapists Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia F. Farnham, in their book Modern Woman: The Lost Sex, joined in explicitly criticizing those who remain unmarried: "Bachelor and spinster," they asserted, "both represent examples of impaired masculinity

Introduction

5

and femininity." Bachelors, however, were able to escape this impairment by sublimating their aggressiveness into creative activities and still remain masculine-Descartes, Newton, and Beethoven are mentioned as examples. But women have no such opportunity. Women might succeed in sublimation by becoming a nurturing Florence Nightingale, but they were unable to distinguish themselves in creative work, because "Nature" wanted to keep them on the reproductive track. Lundberg's and Farnham's severe words about single female teachers revealed their conviction that unmarried women were unhealthy. They asserted that such females should be barred from teaching posts "on the ground of theoretical (usually real) emotional incompetence." These teachers have "unquestionably" psychologically damaged many children because they "cannot be an adequate model of a complete woman either for boys or girls." Lundberg and Farnham suggest a scheme to mandate that only women with children teach. The authors deny that they are prescribing marriage for everyone because "too many people today are unfit for ... such a recommendation to make any sense." Nevertheless, they found no inconsistency in asking for the elimination of single women from teaching, one of the primary female occupations in the postwar years, and suggesting that as an alternative such women "would, perhaps, be encouraged to marry . . . or seek other jobs on the ground that they had not met the basic requirements." 17 The harshness of the critiques made by Lundberg and Farnham and other commentators indicates the seriousness of concerns about gender relationships in the postwar years. Changes in these relationships were perceived as subversive threats at home that seemed almost as dangerous as those from abroad. A policy of containment aimed at foreign countries, Elaine Tyler May has pointed out, was paralleled by domestic attempts to contain potential gender disruptions by literally keeping women, in May's words, "homeward bound" as wives and mothers. 18

6

CHAPTER I LIFE

HISTORIES

AND

HISTORICAL

CHANGE

Looking back at the postwar period, it is possible to see a touch of desperation in the efforts to shore up traditional relations at the very moment that increases in women's labor-force participation were undermining the containment of women at home. But the tenuousness and fragility of traditional female norms were not obvious to young women growing up at the time, including the twenty-two in this study. Their world existed within the boundaries of a discourse of "shoulds" and "should nots," "cans" and "cannots," that represented the opportunities and constrictions facing females at the time. Within this world they had the task of constructing a satisfactory sense of self that was as true to their interests and needs as was possible, given the constraints. This book shows the different ways that study participants went about making choices about their lives at important junctures. It also shows how they were able to respond to changes brought about by the women's movement by seizing opportunities once they were offered. Growing up, as most of them did, in middle-class homes with fathers who were employed and with mothers who, for the most part, stayed at home, there were few glimmers of a life beyond the conventionally female. Not surprisingly, by the end of high school eighteen of the twenty-two could be placed in a category, entitled in this book Traditionalist. They had traditional dreams about their future and made choices, consciously or unconsciously, about college or jobs that would position them to be available for marriage. It is amazing, given the oppressiveness of gender norms, that not all of the study participants followed this pattern. In contrast, I label another category as Nontraditionalists. They are the ones who, at the end of high school or later in college, developed nontraditional career aspirations. For young women in the precollege years, it took a supportive father, an obvious talent, or recognition from school to help them in envisioning goals that went beyond the traditional. Dorothy Withers, a Nontraditionalist, received extraordinary support from her father and from teachers that

Introduction

7

made her think that a professional career-in her case as a scientistwas possible. Most, however, did not have that support and had more limited ambitions. Like Frances Martin, a Traditionalist, who met Al in high school and planned her life around that romance, or Ann Goetz and Susan Larson who thought of teaching as a stopgap until marriage, their emotional energies were directed to the real business of finding a husband-not themselves. College provided both new opportunities and new obstacles to this generation. Three of those who were Traditionalists at the end of high school became Nontraditionalists during their college years as for the first time their talents were recognized and they discovered new areas of study. Two of the Nontraditionalists, on the other hand, dropped out of architecture school where they found little support for their ambitions. Those who managed in college to maintain nontraditional career ambitions, or developed them there, met other obstacles as they continued. Julia Lee, for example, who fell in love with academic life in college and decided to get a Ph.D. in political science, was discouraged by the different treatment that she and her husband received as graduate students. She struggled on, but her low self-esteem and lack of support had a paralyzing effect. Perhaps most of all, Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists alike felt the continuing pressure to marry and had to contend with the assumptions underlying middle-class marriage and motherhood in the 1950S and 1960s. Marriage meant a commitment to a husband's career, leaving little room for a wife's. Once children arrived, the cultural expectation that good mothers stayed home full-time resulted in study participants, like the majority of middle-class women in the 1950S and 1960s, becoming stay-at-home mothers. Seventeen of the twenty-two stayed at home as full-time mothers for at least SIX years. The women handled their time at home in various ways. Some, categorized in this book as Contented Housewives, enjoyed their time at home while the Discontented Housewives did not. Some Contented Housewives, called Time-Outers, believed that their full-time commitment to home would be limited and in the mean-

8

CHAPTER I

time managed to construct a satisfactory daily existence. Other Contented Housewives, named Long-Termers, gave little thought to whether they would ever do anything else. The Discontented Housewives, on the other hand, found few devices for making fulltime motherhood a palatable experience. Depressed by their situation, they felt stuck and could foresee no end to their time at home. While study participants were still full-time mothers, the world began to change. The women's movement and increased opportunities in the workplace presented possibilities of a life beyond the home. Most of those in the study were in their thirties, young enough to take advantage of the new ideas promulgated by the women's movement. Each of them responded, although with varying degrees of alacrity. At one extreme were those who plunged into full-time graduate school. At the other end of the spectrum were those who started out with one course at a time or a part-time job. Once involved in new career goals, these women found that, while the world had changed so that middle-class women were being encouraged to seek personal satisfaction through careers, other ideas about appropriate female behavior had not. Those in the study found it hard to shed the expectation that they were responsible for family life, particularly when so many of their husbands continued to have traditional ideas about women's domestic responsibilities. Study participants tried differing strategies and enjoyed varying successes, as indicated by terms used in the book to distinguish their efforts-Negotiators, Accommodators, and Equalizers. Negotiators were able to persuade their husbands to give them assistance with housework. The Accommodators, on the other hand, found their husbands more resistant to helping out and decided that the minimal help they might receive was not worth the continual nagging and arguing and ended up doing most of the work themselves. Much rarer were the few Equalizers whose husbands did more than "help out" and actually shared in the work of family life. In the workplace, the twenty-two also faced continuities from the past, including career structures that demanded a commitment of time and energy that left little room for attention to family life. Given the persistence of traditional attitudes in the family, tradi-

Introduction

9

tional structures in the workplace, and the lack of cultural support for change, it was left up to each of the study participants to devise individualized strategies as they negotiated between career and family and between traditional notions of altruism and selfsacrifice and their desires for independence, autonomy, and selfactualization. For women like these who continued to value their long-time marriages, these strategies often required emotional gymnastics in trying to reconcile their marriage relationships with their aspirations. Often they had to compromise their career goals. Nancy Richardson, a banker, wanted a bachelor's degree in finance to further her career. But to obtain this degree from a special program for bankers would have meant time away from home and intensive studying. Her husband was not sympathetic, so Nancy modified, perhaps forever, her ambitions. On the other hand, Janet Mason, a nursing professor, realized she would have to travel out-of-state to complete her Ph.D. training. Because she had another type of husband, one who was both willing and able to put her career first for a while, she was able to do what was best for her professionally and get the necessary degree. As this variability in the life histories of these women indicates, there are individual, idiosyncratic differences as well as similarities even among those who belong to the same birth cohort and have a similar class and racial background. Each member of this study has some event or circumstance that makes her unique, such as the family background or variations in self-esteem and in marital context. The life histories of the twenty-two study participants illustrate how both historical circumstances and individual situations and initiative have contributed to the choices and opportunities facing the women of this generation.

CHAPTER 2

GROWKN'G UP

FEMALE The Possible and the Appropriate ---0---

The experiences of the women in this study reveal the power of cultural symbols and a traditional socialization, both inside and outside of family life, to shape the perceptions and aspirations of young girls. Eighteen of the twenty-two study participants-like the majority of white, middle-class women in the years after World War II -chose a Traditionalist track by the end of high school, focused on a future as wife and mother. However, there were some, the four labeled Nontraditionalists in this book, who found enough support for a more expansive concept of femininity-one that included a career. The experiences of both groups illustrate the struggles that young girls had in defining their female identity in the postwar years.

THE

TRADITIONALISTS

Early experiences in their family did not provide the Traditionalists with a sanguine view of their mothers' lives. Many participants were critical of their mothers, believing that they had focused too narrowly on the family. Although the mothers were for the most part unhappy with a life centered on domesticity, they did not question whether that was the way it should be. Deeply embedded in traditional notions of womanhood, they were in no position to impart useful advice for the changing times that their daughters would face. The daughters, therefore, were left with a sense of their mothers' discontent but with no model or prescription for doing things difII

12

CHAPTER 2

ferently. In hindsight, and equipped now with the vocabulary and analysis of gender relations provided by the women's movement, some of these daughters can see that their mothers were products of their times who had limited opportunities. Claudia McIntosh knew that her mother was dissatisfied with being a housewife. "I think she was very frustrated. But I think that were my mother living today she would not have become a housewife." But growing up, Claudia and other women in this study did not have this perspective and insight and considered each of their mothers' inability to change the circumstances of their lives a personal and individual failure. Claudia was upset by her mother's second-class status and powerlessness in the family vis-a-vis her father, an alcoholic. She could not understand why her mother tolerated it. I didn't like what she put up with from my father. She had no sense of her own power and sometimes she would say snotty things to him. Sort of subtle put-downs. That would be a characteristic I didn't care for. I think that she should have given him the heave-ho. And gone back to teaching. Evelyn Murphy's mother had also given up teaching when she married. Evelyn contrasted her mother's passive, subservient position in the family with the photos and family stories showing her as a vibrant teacher in a one-room schoolhouse: "I knew that she was in control." Although her mother never implied that she had given anything up, Evelyn felt differently: I just think it was a tremendous waste. The thing I resent about her was that she accepted all of this. I thought she didn't make any effort to change. There was so much unexpressed anger. Karen Masters was also not happy with the way her mother handled her domestic situation. There was a "huge part of me that never wanted to be like my mother at all." I saw her as an absolutely miserable person who resented tremendously staying home and taking care of us, but kept telling us that that was what she should be doing and that we were un-

Growing Up Female

13

grateful for this tremendous sacrifice, that she could have been famous, etc., if it hadn't been for us. This disapproval of their mothers' lives could have encouraged their daughters to look for ways to avoid submerging themselves in the domesticity that had given their mothers such limited satisfaction. But, because the daughters were living in families and in a culture that supported and assumed this way of life, they had little help in envisioning alternatives.! Even when mothers worked outside the home, this seemed to have little impact on their daughters' aspirations. Six of the Traditionalists and one of the Nontraditionalists had mothers who were employed. Despite having mothers who were in the paid working force, it was difficult for daughters to envision jobs or careers as a central element in their mothers'-or any other women's-lives. In part, this was the result of daughters' believing that their mothers worked primarily to help out the family financially. That economic motivation made daughters assume that their mothers took what jobs they could get with little attention to interests or talents. Susan's mother, for example, worked as a teacher from the time Susan was five. "I remember believing that the primary reason that she was teaching was economic, that she needed to so we could live the way she and my father had decided we would live." Such an articulated motivation may very well have been a "cover," disguising the satisfaction that mothers actually had from their work. At a time when outside work was considered permissible for women only if it was defined as helping the family, women were unlikely to dwell on the personal satisfaction they might receive. Daughters were also aware that women seemed to participate in only a narrow range of occupations. Two of the study participants' mothers helped out in their husbands' businesses as bookkeepers or salespersons; a third, Nancy's mother, was a copartner in the family restaurant. Two others worked as cooks at institutions, one of them later becoming a secretary in a public school. Even the two who were in professions were in the prototypically female fields of elementary school teaching and social work. The daughters could

CHAPTER 2

only conclude from family experiences, and their own observations, that if they had career ambitions these would have to be constrained within narrow parameters. No matter what their mothers did, their paid employment was trivialized within the family. It was viewed as secondary to their "real work" of taking care of the family and secondary as well to the work that the father performed outside the home. Susan had an inkling that her mother's work as a teacher had some significance in the outside world. But inside the home, she observed that it was accorded little value, while her father's job commanded privileges at home. In fact my mother was two different people. I knew that she was quite respected at work and that when there needed to be a teacher representative she was often the representative. Some of the tales she would tell would let me know of her strength. I also knew that work was important enough so that sometimes she brought it home. But at home my father was king and she served him. She did everything around the house. They both came home from work about five o'clock and he sat down and she ran around. I do remember one thing that I think struck me even then, that long ago. He wanted her company at night and he didn't like to see her iron, he didn't like her to go downstairs and iron. So she would get up early and iron so that she could give him the time he wanted from her as well. When Susan thought about her own future, not surprisingly she imagined the parental pattern. I thought I would be a teacher. That is what my parents told me was a good thing for a woman to do. I was bright and that is what a bright woman did. I was certain that I would get married and have children. Certainly the career was going to be secondary. The teaching was the career because it would fit with my primary responsibility, which was going to be a wife and mother.

Growing Up Female

15

Family models were not the only influence, of course, but were continually being reinforced, or, as in the case of Nancy, overridden by outside forces. 2 For Nancy the fact that her mother had a responsible job as treasurer of the family restaurant had little impact on her expectations. What had a greater influence was the barrage of ideas about women from the media. We had a TV from 1948 on and it was the beginning of the media blitz in advertising where everyone was wonderfully familyoriented. The father-takes-care-of-the-family sort of an image and that was just the way it was. The power of these images to construct a more persuasive version of reality than personal experience is striking. When Nancy recalls her girlhood visions of her future, she says: I grew up in the fifties generation where little girls went to school and then you graduated from high school and you went to college and you got married and you had a family and you lived happily ever after in your little house on such and such a street that looked like everybody else's little house. Yet while she was growing up, both of her parents were economic contributors, and her mother was gone from the house all day. Living in a postwar world where rigidly demarcated sex roles were constantly promoted, Nancy literally did not "see" her mother's contribution. It was evident to Nancy that her mother was "the mother" and "the wife," responsible for the running of the household. But, like Susan's, her mother's paid work was almost invisible, hidden by her job at home. So, despite having a working mother, Nancy maintained a traditional view of female roles. In high school when she thought about becoming a nutritionist, "in the back of my mind there was always this picture, this image of a family, like 'Father Knows Best.''' Only years later did Nancy realize that her views "were sort of unusual because my mother was really a career person. She always worked." The interactions of daily life also let participants learn of gender

16

CHAPTER 2

limitations on their lives. Claudia's experience, one replicated by many of the other Traditionalists, involved a continuing pressure to conform to acceptable ideas of femininity. For girls this often meant being compliant, nonaggressive, passive. Claudia tried to fantasize a life for herself that was different than her mother's. I was always told and led to believe that I would be a wife and mother, but when I played I always thought I should be Roy Rogers and never wanted to be Dale Evans. I loved building houses out of rocks and would fantasize about building houses and what my house would be like with varied rooms. That is probably as far as I got. I loved Wonder Woman and Spider Woman. Slowly but surely the expectations of appropriate female behavior molded her into shape. I was always told that my voice was louder than anybody else's. I loved wrestling and it was a shock to me that, in the second grade when I could still beat all the boys, that that was no longer admired. That wasn't a good thing for me to be doing. That came as kind of a shock to me and I was hurt that that was no longer admired. Criticism about her unfeminine behavior affected Claudia deeply. She stopped it and, she says, "proceeded to become perfect." This seemed to mean that she began to conform to a more acceptable feminine way of behaving. I always said polite things to people. I would compliment people. I was saved and rededicated several times. This was a Southern Baptist community. I was generally admired for being a very good person. As Claudia discovered, disapproval for gender-inappropriate activity could act as a powerful brake on nontraditional behavior. It encourages the desire to be nice or good. This, as Greer Litton Fox has astutely pointed out, is a powerful form of social control be-

Growing Up Female

17

cause it demands a compliance that "is largely internal-self-control through the internalization of values and norms.") Perhaps the most extreme example of sanctions against inappropriate behavior was the almost fairy-tale drama involving Marilyn Gold. She had been an unwanted child, and her mother had tried unsuccessfully to abort her. She was, according to her mother's account, troublesome and unmanageable. I was quote "born bad," you know, screaming. And all that kind of stuff. At the age of two and a half they sent me away to a home for emotionally disturbed kids because I cried for six days. And I came out a model child. Almost miraculously she emerged from the home "good"; she had learned to be obedient. "I learned that I couldn't get my own way and that I needed to listen to authority and if I listened I would get strokes." Her pleased mother then wanted to show this model child off to everyone: "My mother put me on the stage and I sang on the radio. I was a little Shirley Temple with little curls and everything." Years later, telling about this, Marilyn says bitterly, and wistfully, "I performed. And I think I've been performing all my life, ever since." Marilyn had become the prototypical good girl-obedient and well-mannered. Such compliance could lead to ignoring interests and stifling ambitions, as Helen Blair discovered. She was one of the women in this study who came from a working-class family. Neither of her parents had graduated from high school, but Helen was an excellent student and always made the honor role. Helen was different from her friends-smarter and more intellectual. She read a great deal and, unlike her friends, preferred classical music to Elvis Presley. Her parents "expected that I would be a good student and that I would be no problem. And I wasn't." Helen's interests led her to take a college preparatory course, but she also knew that she would be expected to get a job, so she also took steno and typing. Despite Helen's aptitude and ambition, her parents' view of her future was limited.

18

CHAPTER 2

I think they did what they could. And what they knew how to do from their own life experience. I don't think they had any particular aspirations for myself as an individual other than that I would marry well. When Helen was in her senior year the question of her future plans came into question. I had a course called careers and they gave us an IQ test. And when my IQ test was read, the teacher called me in for a conference and asked how I had done in school and what my aspirations were. She was trying to encourage me to think in terms of a career. Helen had thought about being a teacher and had already received a scholarship from the Future Teachers of America. But by the time of the conference with the teacher, I already knew I had the scholarship and that had been discussed and that was a closed issue at home. Even though I had a scholarship my parents felt that college was not for girls. You did not do it. You know why? All you were going to do is learn to smoke and drink. Helen wanted to go to college so much that years later, as a composed and successful professional woman with a master's degree, she broke down and began to cry as she recalled her disappointment. But Helen was a good girl and despite her ambition believed that she had no option. After all, "You didn't do anything against your parents at that time." Being a good girl, then, had far-reaching implications. It not only meant behaving "nicely" but could mean curtailing ambitions and desires and subsuming them to parental and societal notions of female appropriateness. This notion of what was possible and appropriate for girls was often reinforced by comparisons with brothers. Claudia was very aware that her mother and father had different attitudes toward her and her brother, Donald. "They had high expectations for my brother. He was always sitting in his bedroom building things."

Growing Up Female

19

She remembers her mother frequently saying, "Oh, Donald is very smart, but Claudia is very artistic." "It took me a while," Claudia says, "to reconcile the fact that I could be both." Her future, like Donald's, was supposed to include college. But in Claudia's· case, unlike Donald's, there was no talk of careers, no plans for what she might do in the world of work. Like so many parents of the Traditionalists in this study, Claudia's parents expected their daughter to do well in school, but it was achievement for achievement's sakepart of being a good girl. It appeared to have little connection with careers or planning for the future. Neither Claudia nor her family gave any thought to Claudia's developing her considerable talent as an artist as a career. "I never thought of art as a career. Careers were something one did in offices." Nevertheless, Claudia had a sense of herself as an artist from an earlyage. I think that I started thinking of myself as an artist in the sixth grade when my sixth grade teacher wouldn't allow my Easter egg in the Easter contest because she said I didn't do it because it was so good. And while I was humiliated and upset, it also had a kind of a nice feeling. But Claudia, a spirited youngster, had much of her early feistiness tamed out of her. Her early fantasies of being Roy Rogers and her pride in beating the boys in wrestling had both been curtailed. She was aware, from comparisons made with her brother and her mother's tolerance of a limited life with an alcoholic husband, that there were not too many choices for females. So she threw herself into religion and concentrated on being a good girl. As a good girl, she had survived a very traumatic adolescence. She was left with the sole responsibility for nursing her mother, who died when she was a junior in high school, and she had to cope with an irresponsible, alcoholic father. Hardly aware of how deeply depressed she was, she managed to stay in college for a year and a half. During that time she listened to her older brother and took only "hard" courses, and not one art class. It would be many years before she would come to realize that art was, in fact, to be her career.

20

CHAPTER 2

Barbara Flood's father also had different expectations for her and her brother. My father was a very traditional male. He was very proud of my achievements but I don't think it was ever important to him that I have a career. I don't think it ever dawned on him. My father put a lot of pressure on my brother to have a traditional career. He was the only boy. Jo Butler also was an exceptionally talented young girl who was not encouraged to think of a career. She notes, "They expected me to be a very good student, and I was. And they knew I was bright." Her brothers, however, "were expected to have a career." When she later went to college and became a premed student, she surprised both her family and herself. "My dad was shocked. It never occurred to him. My father always said he wanted his son to be a doctor." Given her upbringing, it is not surprising that I never thought of being a doctor when I was in grade school, junior high, or high school. Whereas I think males of my same age considered that, women just did not consider it. Jo did have an early influence that might have opened up the possibility of thinking about doing something more with her life. Her religious beliefs, unlike Claudia's Southern Baptist focus on being saved, encouraged Jo to use herself in a productive way. I was always a bright child. I really thought that God made me brighter and therefore I had talents that I ought to use. I was good in science and math and I got along well with people. But, at least in her childhood years, family expectations were too powerful to resist. Traditionalist daughters did receive a specific kind of advice about planning for the future. They were warned that girls should have something to fall back on "in case" -in case something happened to their husbands, in case-the unthinkable-they never married. Time and time again young girls received this admonition. Ann's mother, who had been the sole support of the family when

Growing Up Female

21

she left her alcoholic husband for five years and continued with paid work to "help out" financially after she returned, was the living example of this necessity to be prepared. But Ann is still angry that work outside the home was never discussed in terms of her interests or aptitude. I remember vividly, with antagonism when I look back at it, that I was told a career choice should be made because my husband may not always be able to support me. Claudia was also told that her "family might need that education some day. It was never mentioned that I might find some fulfillment for myself in that." A few of those who were Traditionalists at the end of high school had managed to develop some nontraditional ideas about their future in their earliest years. But they abandoned them in adolescence. At that age, as other researchers have also observed, the increasing pressure from parents, teachers, and peers to switch to gender-appropriate behavior interfered with aspirations. 4 Until she was twelve, Karen's father had nontraditional expectations for her. He really raised me the only way he knew how, which was sort of as a boy. So I would get all of these messages about what men did and things like that because it was the only information that he had available. I got footballs and baseballs and I had a workshop. But then she turned twelve and this all changed. I began menstruating, I guess. I mean it was just sort of like my body must have started changing. Suddenly my mother took over. I was slapped into heels and nylons, sent off to junior cotillion, and was supposed to change. My father became sort of aloof. The reaction of Karen's father is not uncommon. Many fathers are threatened by their daughters' emerging sexuality, are made uncomfortable by the arousal of their own sexual feelings that it elicits, and so turn away from their daughters. s At such times their daugh-

22

CHAPTER 2

ters, like Karen, experience this as a rejection and a withdrawal of encouragement. As Karen describes her father's reaction, "He took a step back. He began to be more interested in my boyfriends." At adolescence, also, the social pressure for heterosexual relationships, involvement in dating, and thoughts about marriage could interfere with ambitions. Karen recalls that she had thought about being a doctor when she was little, but "I became an adolescent and realized that what I should do is catch myself a fine man and settle down as quickly as possible." An emotional investment in a serious relationship at an early age could also foreclose consideration of career possibilities, as it did with Frances. Let me say that Al and I discovered each other very young. We started dating in high school and by the end of high school we knew that at some time we would get married to each other and we were together all through college. In some ways it further reinforced the idea that I would get married and have a family. So, she entered college intent on preparing for a job as a teacher, which she believed would enable her to support her husband-to-be in his career choice. Thus the early experiences of the eighteen in the Traditionalists' group made it difficult for them to consider contemplating roles very different from their mothers'. As Julia said: I think that if you asked me what I wanted to do, I would say I wanted to be something like a famous politician or international something or other. But when you talk about what you picture, I don't think I pictured that. I think visually I pictured what my family was. Whether they were critical of their mothers or not, they could not help but identify with their mothers as models for womanly behavior, particularly when there was little encouragement elsewhere-from their fathers, from school, from the media-to do anything else. The eighteen Traditionalists could not imagine a future without a

Growing Up Female

23

husband or one that involved a career that was central to their lives. By high school graduation, most of them felt that their future was hazy, dependent as it was not on who they were or might aspire to be but on whom they would marry. One woman said that the inescapable picture of the future involved, literally and symbolically, "a picket fence and a rose flower garden." Even if their own family lives had been miserable-and in this group there were seven instances of one or both parents being alcoholic-the image of their future life was borrowed, as Nancy had remarked, from "Father Knows Best." There was little possibility, in such imagining, for a life other than as wife and mother. Contrasting the pictures she had in her head as a girl with the one imagined by her husband, Julia mused: From the smallest age you don't picture yourself in a job. And if you talk to someone like my husband, he pictured himself in jobs. They were different jobs at different times but that's how you picture yourself. You know, this is what my life is supposed to be like-carry my little briefcase into work. A vision of autonomy-going off to work unencumbered by spouse and children-did not appear to be a viable reality for most young middle-class women in the postwar years.

THE

NONTRADITIONALISTS

Both Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists had similar early years shaped by intense cultural pressure to conform to traditional ideas of womanhood. 6 Yet the four Nontraditionalists were able to expand that narrow definition of femininity to include thoughts of a career, along with marriage-not an easy task to do during the postwar years. Aletha Huston-Stein and Ann Higgins-Trenk have suggested that nontraditional ideas develop only when there is "at least one 'unusual' influence, be it a parent, a school program, or a particularly potent peer or adult model. In the absence of 'intervention' on some level the culture breeds a traditional female." 7 The Nontraditionalists, unlike the Traditionalists, received that

CHAPTER 2

kind of intervention. It is noteworthy that none of the Traditionalists could name any influences that encouraged them toward nontraditional choices when they were young-not a family member, friend, or teacher. The situation was very different for the four women who were Nontraditionalists. They received support from school, from their mothers and, most particularly, from their fathers. Father's support, or the desire to please him, seemed to playa particular role in the lives of the four Nontraditionalists, especially because they found little to emulate in their mothers' lives. Many of the Traditionalists had also disapproved of aspects of their mothers' lives, but that criticism, without support for a different choice, did not provide the dynamic that encouraged career aspirations. Sandra Thompson, a Nontraditionalist, disliked, as did many of those characterized as Traditionalists, the way her mother's life had turned out. Like so many of the women in this study, Sandra felt that her mother did not fulfill her potential and would have preferred being something more than a housewife. I actually feel sorry for her because she is a very intelligent woman. And she really could have had a much more interesting life than the one she had. She is extremely creative, very artistic, and she did what she could. But unfortunately it was the wrong period of time. I honestly think that she would have gone to school and gotten a degree in something and would have done something with herself. Sandra was angry at her father who left her sickly mother with all of the domestic responsibility. He drank and smoked and he was never home. It was the typical "mom stays home with the kids" routine and "dad is out with the boys having a good old time." Nevertheless, Sandra attributes her nontraditional interests to her father who, lacking a son, invested his ambitions in her, as the oldest daughter. "I honestly felt that my dad was disappointed that he didn't get a boy. And I was the boy in the family." Although Sandra resented her father's treatment of her mother, she saw that meeting

Growing Up Female

25

his nontraditional expectations had personal benefits: "It was a drive for me to try to get his approval or attention." Her mother, also, encouraged her, never giving her stereotyped toys. I never played with dolls or anything. I was fortunate that I had parents that did not force me into the typical female role. I was the type of kid that got the mechanical electro set and the chemistry set, and trains, and wanted it all. As a kid during Christmas my mom used to lock me up in my room and I would put all my sister's stuff together. So I would think that from working with drawings and working with putting things together, the natural course of direction was to go into drafting. In high school, therefore, Sandra insisted on taking mechanical drawing instead of home economics-an astonishing demand in the 1950S. But her parents gave her unequivocal support. The school authorities "threw a fit over that one. No girls in drafting. You just want to go because of the boys. And my parents went to bat for me." Because of her talents and interests, Sandra wanted to model herself after her father and become an engineer, but "in those days, girls didn't think about being engineers." Engineering seemed an unlikely choice because she didn't know any women engineersnot surprising at a time when less than 1 percent of engineers were women. 8 Luckily she had heard of two women architects, one who lived in her town and one she had read about in the paper. They were her inspiration. She thought she could do it "just knowing there was such a thing as a woman architect. If there hadn't been I don't know what I would have done. If there hadn't been one of those what would I have gone into?" As Sandra's example shows, young girls with nontraditional interests had to grasp at the most tenuous models in order to assure themselves that their goals were attainable. Having a boyfriend already in architecture school helped also. I think that was part of it. That was a good reason to go into architecture. Why not? You use math and science. He told me about art.

CHAPTER 2

Sandra's experience illustrates the often contradictory strands in the early years of the women in this study. Sandra was close to her mother and certainly identified with her. Her father was domineering and not close to his daughters, and Sandra resented this both for her own sake and for her mother's. Although Sandra resented her distant father, she longed to get his attention. She found that she could do this by being the son, developing interests similar to his. Virginia Reed, another Nontraditionalist, also was influenced by her engineer father. This was evident when she was asked what she had thought that she would be when she grew up. She began by describing herself as "the oldest daughter of an overachieving father. My family raised me, expected me, to excel academically. My father viewed me, as a very small girl, as precocious." Although her mother was also very interested in her academic success, it was her father who expressed concern about how well she did, and so she found out "that was the way 1 pleased him, to excel academically." As a result, when she was in high school, "I was a real drone and 1 did nothing but study, essentially. 1 worked very hard." Her mother was a very intelligent person who led a traditional life. My mother is the kind that focused a lot of her achievement on a perfectly clean home. Anything that was not to her standards was not acceptable. My mother did things like wax her furnace. Although Virginia's mother was happy, Virginia sensed that there was something missing. When she was growing up, her choices were when you got married, you quit working if your husband could support you. 1 think that while she felt on one dimension that this was very important and something she wanted to do, on another dimension she was sorry that she hadn't had a chance to do the things she wanted. She was kind of dichotomous: She had all the traditional values and yet she realized with a part of her that there was something missing. Virginia thought she had that same polarity herself.

Growing Up Female

27

I wanted to do Doris Day and Rock Hudson. I spent half of high school thinking that I would wake up one morning and look like Elizabeth Taylor if I only wear the right face cream. Yet I wouldn't be satisfied with that alone because I really did like studying and I did like learning. I wanted to have it all, of course. There were factors pushing Virginia toward a Nontraditional choice -the combination of her father's delight in her precocity, her obvious academic talent, and his career as an engineer, which could serve as a model. Nevertheless, there were a number of issues that put both Virginia's and Sandra's commitments at risk. Although Virginia was interested in architecture school she, like Sandra, really did not understand what it would be like for a female student. How could they at a time when there were few women architects and none whom they knew personally? As Virginia recalled: I was probably naive enough not to anticipate difficulties. I think when you are in high school, at least in my high school, and being very academically oriented, I felt that if you were smart you could do it. Most important, Sandra and Virginia were also involved in serious romantic relationships that could provide a socially acceptable alternative if school did not work out. Much would depend on the kind of support both Sandra and Virginia received in architecture school. In contrast, Dorothy'S commitment to a nontraditional path was especially fierce. An only child, she very early distinguished herself from other little girls. I was very interested in all kinds of living creatures, which made other little girls squeal. I wasn't at an early age, as early as many friends, interested in matters of personal grooming, of perhaps deception. I appeared in comparison to those I knew very well-my friends-to be a little less interested than they

CHAPTER 2

were in appearances, in what might be traditionally considered feminine. Dorothy was identified early as a gifted child. In New York City, where she attended elementary school, she was tested, found to have a high IQ, and placed in junior high school classes for the gifted. She continued to receive support throughout high school. Because of her interests, she assumed she would have a career as a scientist. The things I liked best were the natural sciences. That is why I assumed that that is what I would do. When I was in high school I had an opportunity to actually participate in research. I worked in a professor's lab as a student assistant. Dorothy attributed her obtaining this job to sheer luck, a common explanation for success among females, unlike males who more often attribute success to talent. 9 Yet she showed considerable initiative in getting this job. I had heard that there was an individual who was the director of the particular laboratory who was willing to have high school students work in the laboratory. I had heard it through another student and I simply went there one day and he spent a long time speaking with me and he said I could come to work in the laboratory. At the lab, the research scientists were generous with their time and took a special interest in her. Dorothy's father, a high school science teacher whom she greatly respected, also gave her a great deal of support. His admiring daughter felt that "he was able to tell me or anybody else about almost anything in a very kind and very comprehensible way." Unlike her mother, he was generous, gentle, and very patient. Most important, he gave Dorothy a sense "that there were no limitations other than my inherent ones." He did not expect her to be "a typical girl if that meant that I couldn't express myself." Dorothy had a conflicted relationship with her mother, whom she thought of as a very complex, difficult woman. Her mother, an ac-

Growing Up Female

29

complished, ambitious professional artist and model, had given up her career to marry and have children. She didn't like her status at all. She would have liked to be able to develop her talent and have a career, but it didn't work out that way. Her mother felt that she had to stay home because "it was understood that those were the rules that people have." Dorothy admired her mother's intelligence, skills, and competence. But her mother was a demanding person, intolerant of performances that were not what she considered to be the best. For Dorothy, "in those areas, for example the academic areas where it was easy, then it was easy. In other areas, it was difficult." Dorothy finds it hard to explain what was so difficult about her mother, speaking "of those areas of her personality which created conflict and that is very difficult to describe. It is just impossible." She certainly presented Dorothy with a model of frustrated, embittered womanhood. Dorothy, determined and accomplished, set out for college planning to have a career in science. She was certain she would marry but less sure whether she would have children. Unusual for her time in having a career goal, she had given little thought to how she would reconcile career and family life. Ruth Fuller, unlike Dorothy, had only tenuous support for her career choice as a psychologist but, like Dorothy's and the other Nontraditionalists', her father was a significant influence. During most of Ruth's childhood, however, she maintained traditional ideas about her future. She thought: I will get married and have a child-that was it! If anything, there was, "I will be a teacher like my teachers." That was all I am aware of anybody thinking they were going to grow up and do. Looking back on what influenced her to think that way she attributes it to "the whole culture." Ruth was brought up in a very sex-stereotyped household. Her father owned a paint store, and her mother worked in the store along with him.

30

CHAPTER 2

Interesting, somebody in my family recently said, and I had never thought of it that way, that my mother was one of the original liberated women. I hardly think she thought of herself that way. Her mother was responsible for all the housework. She cared about having a clean house and, though she had a cleaning woman once a week, "she would work alongside with her and they would clean together and my mother did probably twice as much." Her parents wanted her to be a good student but, as with the Traditionalists, demanded more of her brother. He, after all, was the one who was going to have a career. Ruth had a great deal of difficulty with her mother, whom she calls "a very neurotic woman" who "could not handle the idea that her children might grow up and no longer be totally dependent on her." Her mother thought it was all right to go to college only because that was a place to meet a husband. Despite these traditional pressures, Ruth decided on a Nontraditionalist career as a psychologist while she was in high school. She attributes this to her father's influence. He died when she was thirteen, but she had felt close to him. "He was warm and understanding and he was someone that you could talk to. He was very caring." He had suggested a specific career for her and she took his advice seriously. My father was very interested in psychology and I can recall his telling me, "You are sympathetic, you are understanding, you are perceptive-you would be a good psychologist." Ruth also received a lot of gratification from school: "I was a good student and that is where I got the appreciation. And that is where a lot of my self-identity came from, being a good student." Ruth could very well have entered college with the traditional ideas that she had had as she grew up. But the influence of her father, perhaps magnified because of his early death, the gratification she received from school, and her rejection of her mother as a model combined to turn her onto a nontraditional path.

Growing Up Female TRADITIONALISTS

31 AND

NONTRADITIONALISTS

Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists had different goals at the end of high school but they had had similar experiences in their early years. All of them received mixed messages about what it meant to be female in our society. The prevailing ideology prescribed marriage and motherhood, yet they observed that such a life was not satisfactory for their mothers. Mothers played a complex role in influencing their daughters. Gail Nash, a Traditionalist, and her two sisters were told directly by their mother not to follow her example. Gail's mother had been a scientist but had ended her career after she married. She had always regretted that and said to her daughters, "I hope you won't do this." Yet Gail followed her mother's pattern of becoming a full-time mother. When asked why, she replied, "I think I envisioned myself staying home because my mother had been at home. That was sort of the image that I had, the model that I had, and I felt that I should do that." Gail's reaction demonstrates how difficult it was for daughters to avoid the model of femininity that mothers provided, particularly when their mothers were in no position to give advice about how to do it differently, other than the exhortation, as in Gail's case, that they should. Little in the world outside the home provided alternatives either. Although there was an increase in the numbers of women in paid work, these were limited to low-paid, low-status jobs which were difficult for middle-class women to consider an integral part of their self-identity. Experiences with school and the media, and in the interactions of daily life, reinforced traditional ideas. As a result both Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists found few effective role models for change. lo Despite the similarities between the early experiences of the Traditionalists and the Nontraditionalists, there was one important difference. The Nontraditionalists were able to imagine a kind of life that expanded gender limitations to include a career. Crucial for them was the kind of support they received, usually from their fathers. The role of fathers in promoting daughters' nontraditional choices seems characteristic of many achieving women, as Carolyn Heilbrun

32

CHAPTER 2

discovered in her reading of biographies of accomplished women. ll In a common pattern, a daughter's ambition was encouraged because the father never had a son. Sandra decided to be an architect, quite self-consciously setting out to act like the son her father had desired. Other Nontraditionalists, as Heilbrun also found, chose to model themselves after their fathers because they perceived that their fathers had more exciting lives than those of their mothers or other women. Sandra, Virginia, and Dorothy eagerly emulated their fathers' careers. But in addition to acting as models, their fathers were able to offer them an alternative set of attitudes and values about the significance of their gender. Dorothy's father pinpointed it directly when he told her that being a "typical girl" was not important if "that meant that I couldn't express myself." Expressing herself was clearly valued more than conforming to gender strictures. He let her know that he did not consider gender a limitation; only her abilities and intelligence could provide that. Each of the Nontraditionalists' fathers shared a similar attitude toward their daughters, not considering gender the necessary determinant of ambitions and goals. Because their fathers were the authoritative figure in the family, it was possible for daughters to adopt their view as legitimate. Fathers' views were not the only factor. Dorothy and Ruth both had school experiences that made them feel special. Dorothy was identified early in school as an exceptionally talented student, while Ruth derived a great deal of self-esteem from her school experience. Sandra's mother, as well as her father, supported her in her attempt to take mechanical drawing and encouraged her playing with nontraditional toys. Without these interventions, the Nontraditionalists would not have had the courage to develop nonfeminine ambitions. Particularly at a time when there was such a strong emphasis on traditional norms for gender behavior, this support was crucial. It is important to note, however, that the Nontraditionalists were still very much influenced by the cultural mandate to marry. They did not foresee a future that precluded marriage. Two of them, Sandra and Virginia, were already involved in serious romantic relationships. What was unusual about the four Nontraditionalists was

Growing Up Female

33

that they had developed a serious interest in a nontraditional career, along with marriage goals. The early experiences of both Nontraditionalists and Traditionalists, however, would not be the sole determinant of their life choices. They all would have new experiences and opportunities after high school. For some, these would provide encouragement to contemplate new options while, for others, it would undermine their ambitions.

CHAPTER

3

BECOMING ADULT WOMEN ---0---

Their college years provided a bridge to adulthood for the twenty of the study participants who pursued their education. 1 Gender considerations continued to playa powerful role in shaping opportunities and aspirations, as the contrasting experiences of study participants and the men they married demonstrate. Women at college in the late 1950S and early 1960s faced many of the same paradoxes about gender behavior and expectations that marked their early years. On the one hand, college seemed to offer a potential breathing space, a time to escape the oppressiveness of a restrictive gender ideology and explore new options. Some scholars, in fact, have argued that the college years are the one period when men and women are most equaF Theoretically, at least, both men and women could grow and develop in a place where there was the opportunity to learn about new subjects, meet different kinds of people, and have new experiences. But the college culture was also very much influenced by the ideological conservatism of the postwar years of which traditional roles for women was a cornerstone. It was therefore suffused with institutional practices, both subtle and explicit, that prevented women from competing on an equal footing with men. These included discriminatory admissions policies, including quotas, counseling that funneled women into traditional courses and careers, the absence of female professors to act as role models, financial aid skewed to help males, and courses that focused on the achievements and experiences

35

CHAPTER

3

of white males. 3 Even more undermining was professors' lack of respect for professionally motivated women, thereby indicating their doubts that women were serious about their studies and their goals. But the most influential factor shaping study participants' college and graduate school experience was the gender prescription to marry. Prevailing ideology continued to insist that adult womanhood could be achieved only through marriage and motherhood and it was difficult to evade that dictate. 4 In fact, throughout the 1950S a vocal number of academics and administrators advocated designing a curriculum for women that would prepare them to be better wives and mothers. s Adlai Stevenson, liberal Democratic candidate for president in 1952 and 1956, saw no incongruity in advising the graduating class of the elite women's college Smith in 1954 that their job was to keep their husbands purposeful and whole. 6 No wonder that college was considered a perfect marriage market. Sixteen of the twenty study participants who went to college married during their school years or soon after. Those who did not spent considerable energy immediately after college looking for mates. For men it was quite different. Men might also be interested in marrying, but their interest did not interfere with their settling on career goals that reflected their interests, strengths, and ambitions. Middle-class, educated men knew that their acceptance into the adult world depended, not on marrying alone, but on their successful pursuit of a career. Not only was a man's career of crucial importance to his own self-definition, but it was also significant in defining the terms of heterosexual relationships. Both sexes acceded to one of the basic assumptions of middle-class family life-that a husband's career was the only one that counted and all else would have to revolve around it. Husbands and wives implicitly subscribed to the idea of what Hanna Papanek has called the two-person career. A professional career, Papanek has suggested, often entailed the work of both the husband and the wife-the husband for the obvious career work and the wife for the supportive role of comforter, entertainer, and child tender.7 The notion that it was possible to maintain only one career, and that it would be the husband's, was one of the central issues that study participants faced in undergraduate and graduate school.

Becoming Adult Women

37

Study participants responde, to the paradoxes they found in different ways. Most of the Traditionalists continued to pursue the course they had determined on at the beginning of college. Others, however, made changes-three Traditionalists developed new, nontraditional, career goals while two Nontraditionalists gave up their ambitions to become architects. The experiences of both Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists underscore the difficulties that all of them faced as they tried to carve out appropriate niches for themselves as adult women.

THE THE

TRADITIONALISTS:

CONTINGENCY

STRATEGY

Frances, a Traditionalist who had started going out seriously with Al in high school, was an excellent student in college. But her early romantic attachment to Al meant that she did not-would notgive much serious thought to what she might like to do in the future. Aware that she would have to fit any of her plans into the interstices of his career, Frances prepared to be a teacher. AI, on the other hand, used his college years to develop a deep interest in an academic career that would require extensive graduate work and considerable mobility. Frances's choices were part of what one author has called "a contingency strategy." 8 Like many college women she did not become deeply committed to any interests of her own but remained flexible and open so she could fit in with her husband's plans. This was a strategy used, whether consciously or not, by many of the Traditionalists. There was a pragmatic side to it also, Frances notes, "I was supposed to put him through graduate school." This dependence on a wife's income to support a husband for advanced training was an integral part of the economy of the postwar period. It meant that wives were a crucial ingredient in abetting male mobility, allowing men to acquire the necessary skills to get ahead. This support was considered part of women's duties. Study participants' mothers had advised them early on to become teachers or secretaries so that they could help their future husbands. Some colleges even instituted

38

CHAPTER

3

special PHT (putting hubby through) ceremonies at graduation in recognition of wives' support. 9 Janet, like Frances, curtailed her own interests in favor of her husband's career. Janet had wanted to be a nurse, but she also had wanted a liberal arts education. At that time nursing degrees were available primarily at nursing schools, so she decided to forego that pursuit and go to college instead, where she decided on a premed course of study. "But," as she puts it, "in the meantime I met my husband." The timing of the marriage was decided by his educational timetable, not hers; they married after he had completed college and was starting graduate school. It was the end of her sophomore year. Marrying meant leaving her elite college and transferring to the state university he was attending. She continued her premed studies, but was told by her adviser, "Don't bother to apply to medical school because married women's applications go directly in the circular file." "That was 1959," she says, "and it was next to impossible for married women to get into medical school." It was an obstacle thrown in her way but one she did not attempt to overcome. She accepted her university's advice and made no attempt to inquire elsewhere. Janet's ambivalence about medical school and preference for a nursing career were undoubtedly factors. But she also had to deal with the reality of a young professional husband who was starting a career. Both she and her husband, Neil, knew that they would have to move where opportunity took him. Fourteen months after she graduated from college, Janet had her first child and began a ten-year stint of staying home with children. Most of the Traditionalists pursued a course similar to that of Frances and Janet. They either prepared for traditional jobs that did not require many years of graduate training and career development or made no preparation at all. They did not think about whether this work was suitable for them or matched their talents or interests. Of those who completed college, four became teachers; three, counselors; and one a nurse; four others took a liberal arts course. Although most of the Traditionalists were married during college or shortly after, even those who did not have a particular marriage partner in mind structured their lives to fit in with an (unknown)

Becoming Adult Women

39

husband's (unknown) career. Julia captures the flavor of how that played itself out in describing how the young women in her sorority prepared themselves for the kind of jobs that would be useful in supporting husbands, whom they had not yet met. A lot of women took practical courses. Speech therapy was the thing. And I mean they would sit around in their rooms and cut paper dolls. It was just awful. And yet speech therapy rather than something more general, and you are all ready to go right into a job. Some Traditionalists even worried that an interest in a committed career, rather than a job, might be an actual impediment to marriage. Ann switched from a small women's college to a state university when she looked at the seniors and was appalled to find that they were nice people but they weren't well-rounded. They were only interested in education-going on for a doctorate in English literature. They were never going to settle down and have a family. Ann was very different from these women. She was studying to be a math teacher but said, "I always wanted to settle down and have a family. That was the ultimate goal." Ann's preparation to be a math teacher was only "in case" she needed to work as her mother had done in order to supplement an alcoholic father's income. The Traditionalists who did not manage to get married by the end of college continued looking for a husband. After Ann changed colleges, she met a potential mate and thought the relationship was progressing toward marriage. After graduation she took a teaching job near the university where her boyfriend was a graduate student. But after a year and a half, unhappy with her job and increasingly discouraged about prospects of marriage, she decided to move. "I needed to change. I did not know what I was going to do but something was going to happen." After attending a summer program, she moved to Los Angeles where her boyfriend had gotten a job. "I was still chasing him, waiting, going out with him." But at the summer program she had met another man who then

CHAPTER

3

proceeded to pursue her. After a year of going out with both men, she wanted something definitive to happen and realized that her old boyfriend was not going to capitulate. "I decided I wanted to get married. The career was never a primary goal." She quit her job in midyear and moved to be near her new love's home. After two or three months, they decided to marry. Marilyn also was determined to get married. After graduation she moved from her hometown to another larger city, supposedly to work on a master's degree and get a job. But "deep down even though I was going for a job, it really was to find a husband and get married." Within a year and a half she did. Betsy Johnson also was clear about why she moved to a larger city. Her hometown was a terrible place for single women. She found herself dating what she called "the dregs of society." In the larger city, "some week-ends I might have five dates. I had a little black book that I used. It was just paradise coming from my hometown." A year and a half after her move she met and married Steve.

MARRIAGE

AS

A

REFUGE

Clearly, the Traditionalists saw marriage and motherhood as, in Ann's words, "the ultimate goal." Marriage also provided Traditionalists with a kind of refuge from having to confront what Julia called the definition of self. Most middle-class women of this generation had never been expected to think about themselves as independent, autonomous persons. They did not know how to do it, and some were frightened to try. Evelyn had very little idea about what she would do after high school. Although she had disliked her mother's passive reaction to her alcoholic father and could not understand why her mother did not leave and go back to teaching, these circumstances had not helped her to develop a different life plan for herself. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen and she plunged into a depression lasting several years. Using a term from a popular book that decries the passivity of women, she thinks that she had a "Cinderella com-

Becoming Adult Women

plex": "I expected something to happen."iO But she could not think of what steps to take on her own behalf. I had some fantasies about going away to school but I had absolutely no concept of how you would do that. I heard other people talk about planning to go, but I didn't know what I was going to do. Looking back on that time, she says with irony, "Wasn't there somebody who was going to come around and tell me pretty soon?" Her father came to the rescue by inviting her to attend a college near his home. During her first year at school she met Bob, who asked her to marry him. She did, and immediately dropped out of school. There was no thought of her continuing. Bob was in his senior year and her college life was effectively over. Asked what she did during Bob's senior year she remembers helping him apply for jobs. Married at eighteen, she had her first of five children one year later. Somebody had, at last, told her what she was going to do. Marriage also seemed essential to Cynthia Chessman. A precocious young woman who entered college at sixteen and was talented in both writing and acting, she had led a bohemian life during her junior college year in Paris. "I got frightened," she says, "by what I saw were the possibilities for a woman living alone." She became involved "with a lot of very unsuitable people who were bad for me, and if I wasn't hooked up with one person, one man specifically, I was very vulnerable." So, she felt "a real need to hook up with one man." But she was also afraid of getting married. I felt it was very dangerous because I saw that my peers were pairing off. Women submerged themselves in the fifties and they lost any kind of individuality they had had. They became wives and mothers. Despite these fears she began talking herself into it-"sort of subliminally conceptualizing the role of wife and mother." Marrying was frightening but not marrying was worse. When she married, the plan was that "my husband was going to

CHAPTER

3

get a job and then I could have some time to look around to think about what I wanted to do, if I wan:ted to go to graduate school." The vagueness of her thoughts about the future were in strong contrast to her husband's clearly outlined career ladder toward a professorship. Almost immediately after she married she experienced discrimination that made her reluctant to even consider graduate school. My scholarship was halved because my husband was also on full tuition grant. And 1 was told point blank by the dean of students that my husband was a better bet. They were gonna get their money back from him and they didn't want to bet on me. You could call this a lack of encouragement. A disincentive. Her reaction, although strong, was not as angry as it should have been, she feels now. "I was pissed but not outraged." At that point "I didn't have any kind of feminist analysis of society or culture." She knew that it was not right but had no way to articulate her sense that it was unjust. As Cynthia's vagueness about her future indicates, she had an ambivalence toward committing herself to a career although by the time she was nineteen she had already received recognition as a writer. During her junior year in Paris she had met a number of writers who praised her work, one of whom introduced her to his agent. He helped her get one of her stories published and then arranged for her to meet with a publisher about writing a book. But Cynthia drew back. "That all seemed too serious; 1 was still in college and also 1 was going to get married." "Also I was going to get married"-this was reason enough in those days. But looking back, Cynthia says, "I think it is fear that kept me from doing it." The primary pattern that I've noticed in myself, especially with respect to my writing, is that if 1 don't ever say that I am doing it seriously then I won't be too disappointed or too harshly judged when I fail-not if I fail-when 1 fail. So 1 haven't ever owned that. I haven't ever identified myself as a worker in a certain field because then I would have to stick by that and be

Becoming Adult Women

43

judged as such. And succeed in the terms of whatever they are. And that's been too frightening to me. This lack of confidence and self-doubt characterized many middleclass women in this study. Never encouraged to take their interests and talents seriously as they were growing up, they found little support as young adults to do so. In that respect, Cynthia was different. Her talent was recognized, but even so she was unsure of herself and shied away from embracing an opportunity to pursue a writing career. One explanation for this kind of reluctance has been offered by research on the "fear of success." The argument is that women are afraid that succeeding in a nontraditional way will compromise their femininity, so, rather than face that, women do not try. Further research has indicated that both sexes, not only women, shy away from succeeding in nontraditional fields. They do this, not so much out of fear, but because they understand the negative social consequences of such behavior.ll Another plausible explanation for lack of career commitment is offered by Barbara who, like Cynthia, decided not to pursue her professional interests and who also felt conflicted about her abilities and about what she wanted. Barbara observes that because middleclass women, unlike men, have a choice about whether to have a career "it requires a leap of really saying you are worthy." Men don't have to make that leap. It becomes a necessity. It may be tremendously stressful for men because of the push to do so. Nonetheless they don't have to make the leap. Whereas the women are saying, "Well, can I really do it?" The men probably do have those same doubts, but they have to plunge ahead and do it at whatever level they do it at. Few among the Traditionalists had the confidence to make that leap. They could smother their self-doubt in marriage and at the same time receive some satisfaction and societal approval for fulfilling their gender "destiny." Making traditional choices was also a way to avoid another diffi-

44

CHAPTER

3

cult issue: how to fit a career into a family life where a wife's responsibilities for children and for supporting a husband's career left little room for a second career. Barbara, unlike some of the other Traditionalists, tried to find a way to accommodate both careers. She married at graduation and followed her husband to graduate school where he was already a student. She decided to get a master's degree in Latin American studies, an interest of her much-admired and dead brother. It seemed that, for the time, 1964, "I was much more interested in a career than most other women of my age." Nevertheless, in many ways, she was leading a traditional life, doing all the housework and spending time with friends who were having babies. The moment of decision came when she started on another master's degree in anthropology that would have required her to spend some time in Latin America. Neither she nor her husband could imagine how they could deal with the contradictory demands of combining two careers and having children, which they both wanted. The fact that there were so few two-career families made it difficult to envision how to do it. It just didn't gel. It was like, how are we going to do this? How are we going to have kids? How am I going to have a career? How can he have his career?

Faced with all these difficulties, Barbara did not know what to do. So "I just kind of really dropped the ball and just gave up." And then, Barbara says, her husband Tim finished graduate school. So instead of going to Latin America, Barbara followed him to his first job and, ignoring her ambivalence about a career, had a child. For Traditionalists like Evelyn, Cynthia, and Barbara, marriage was a haven that allowed them to evade the challenge of thinking about their lives in terms other than marriage and motherhood. Because none of them had received any encouragement, it was easier to do so. In fact, as Barbara points out, because it was not expected that women would opt for careers, deciding to do so took an extra amount of confidence. None of the Traditionalists had that. If, as with Barbara, they did try to think of ways of combining marriage and careers they found few answers. Given the centrality of a husband's career, there seemed no way to fit in another one, particularly

Becoming Adult Women

45

with children. Marriage seemed the best solution to ambivalence and uncertainty, particularly because it entailed the comfort of doing the socially approved thing. It is a mistake, however, to think of the Traditionalists as simply hapless victims of the feminine mystique. Given their circumstances-the internalized desire to find a husband, the structural barriers to many occupations, and the lack of socially approved alternatives to marriage and motherhood-these women's strategies of remaining tentative and uncommitted to a career was a logical one.

THE

NONTRADITIONALISTS

It was difficult to maintain nontraditional goals during the college years. Only two of the four who started as Nontraditionalists continued on that path during college; the two others became Traditionalists. On the other hand, college also provided enough of the excitement of new possibilities that three Traditionalists switched to nontraditional plans. All of the Nontraditionalists needed special encouragement to succeed. As trailblazers in traditionally male fields, they had a kind of tentativeness and fragility that would require extra support to help see them through. They needed more of the same kind of intervention that had enabled some of them to think about future careers when they -were young girls. Ultimately, all of the Nontraditionalists relinquished their career ambitions and became involved in a life of full-time domesticity, acceding to the many pressures that pushed them there. But they did not give up easily. The dimensions of their struggles during college and graduate school offer a vivid picture of the kinds of obstacles that even the most determined young women had to confront. FROM

NONTRADITIONALIST

TO

TRADITIONALIST

Both Sandra and Virginia had begun their college careers determined to be architects. They had received support from their families, particularly their engineer fathers, for their choices. Sandra had been

CHAPTER

3

treated as the "son" in a family \without one and had always demonstrated an interest and aptitude in mechanical things. Virginia had been an excellent student and expected little difficulty. But both of them had entered architecture school relatively ignorant about the substance of the program. They had given little thought in particular to what it would be like being one of only a few women. Sandra and Virginia soon discovered that in a place like architecture school, where women made up a minuscule percentage of each class, the discouragement was severe. Sandra: "Completely Burned Out" Sandra was one of two women in her architecture class of forty. It did not bother her, she says, but "it bothered the professors; it really did." And they made it so difficult that "it was because of the professors that I dropped out." They gave us a rough time, a really rough time. There were little inferences that girls should be doing something else. Or there should be room for the guys. They were just saying that you have no aptitude for this. The faculty also made it clear that "we had to choose between architecture and marriage." They said this to the whole class, not just to the women, but Sandra was convinced, accurately no doubt, that it was directed toward the women because "you know, it is not going to bother the guys at all." In her second year she received "a crushing blow," a C in her design class. She was told that she had to repeat the class in order to get a B or better. That summer she decided to take a job with an architect to try to answer the question "Do 1 really want it bad enough to go back and face all this stuff?" But her boyfriend, whom she had met when she was sixteen, followed her to the East Coast and, at that point, she decided to get married. She was madly in love and marriage seemed preferable to dealing with the difficulties of architecture school. Her plans for marriage were, she says, typical: "I will work and put you through school," which 1 did. There was never any talk of me going back to school. And of course,

Becoming Adult Women

47

back then, I guess it didn't even occur to me. I had been through such a horrible experience with the architecture college that it had just completely wiped out any idea of what I might go into. I was completely burned out. I didn't ever want to see another book in my life if I could help it. Having had to settle for architecture when she really preferred engineering had also made school difficult for her. The architecture school was purely into art. It really didn't have anything to do with where the bathroom went or whether the rooms all went together in the right way. And I was too practical for them. This was just one more discomfort added to all the others that made architecture school seem such an inhospitable place. When marriage beckoned, she made the traditional choice and dropped out of school. Virginia: "J Flunked Slide Rule" Virginia, who also had settled for architecture school instead of engineering, found herself confronted by the same kind of discrimination that Sandra did. As one of two or three women in a school of two or three hundred men she "came up against the fact that there was really differential treatment because I was a woman. That put me at a disadvantage." You have a lot of drawing labs where you have big projects to design. Women had very strict curfews in their dorm. But the men could stay out all night and work on their projects. I had to be in at ten and carryall my stuff back to the dorm. This clearly handicapped her, but she is not sure that that is the only reason she dropped out. "I probably would have flunked anyway. I wasn't very good at it." In fact, she first described her reasons for leaving by saying, deprecatingly, "I flunked slide rule." She was in fact far from flunking, although she was not attaining the sterling record she expected of herself. No doubt men with similar records continued. But like Barbara and Cynthia, and so many other women

CHAPTER

3

in this study, she did not have the confidence to persist, particularly when she needed a great deal of it in such a male bastion. So she took the socially acceptable choice, available to middle-class women, to opt out. The fact that she had a boyfriend whom she "couldn't bear to be parted from anymore" made it easier to leave. She transferred to her hometown university where she switched to the more traditional goal of becoming a librarian. Even that career was short-circuited when she married shortly after graduation from college, became pregnant almost immediately, and stayed home for the next ten years. Both Virginia and Sandra found it difficult to pursue their interests in a milieu that provided little support for women. In the inhospitable atmosphere of architecture school, where women students were viewed by the institution as deviant, the struggle seemed overwhelming. Marriage was certainly a refuge after an unsuccessful experience, bringing with it assurances of normality and of fulfilling appropriate roles without the tensions that nontraditional choices had brought.

FROM

TRADITIONALIST TO

NONTRADITIONALIST

Julia: "Completely Unstrategic" College was a revelation for Julia, who started college as a Traditionalist. She had grown up in a small midwestern town with a father who was a lawyer and a mother who was a community volunteer. She had not been a conscientious student during her high school years, particularly after the death of her mother during her freshman year. But in college she became excited by ideas and by her teachers, majored in Russian and political science, and began thinking about becoming a college professor. Julia decided to launch herself on a career first and then marry when she was older. When she met her future husband in her junior year in college she warned him immediately, "I'm not going to get married until I'm old. I'm determined to be independent. I'm not going to get married until I'm at least twenty-six. And then," she says ruefully, "I was married at graduation."

Becoming Adult Women

49

It was clearly the thing to do. 1 had positively thought that 1 was not going to get married, that 1 did not want to get married, to do this sort of routine everyone did, though 1 did intend at some time to get married.

Julia was afraid that marriage might divert her from her newfound interests, but she was also concerned about what would happen if she did not marry. She was struggling with what she termed "a problem of self-definition: What is a woman at the point in life when she is not a student any longer and she is not a wife?" Julia tried to assure herself that she, at least, would have an identity after college. "I would have still been something because 1 was going to go to graduate school. And 1 wouldn't have had that hiatus or break." But Julia found it hard to evade the prevailing belief that a woman had no identity, was literally not a legitimate adult, unless she was a wife. There was an overall concept about what is a woman after she is not a student. You were not supposed to be married when you were in college and after you were done with college you were supposed to be married. And that was just how things were structured. In Julia'S sorority "there was a big feeling about getting hooked up." Julia tried to resist, but "of course, 1 participated in it even though 1 self-consciously tried not to participate in it. Of course 1 did." Once married, Julia found that the struggle to carve out a place for herself as a married woman with career ambitions was just beginning. Although she wanted to pursue a career, she had few concrete ideas about how to be both a mother and a career woman. On the one hand, "it was clear that we both wanted children." But at the same time, "we both had in mind that I was going to be a professor, as was he." The problem was we never thought about how in the hell you do it. It was all completely unstrategic. You have a picture of how you are going to do this and you are also going to have this family with children and animals.

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After college both Julia and her husband Gordon went off to a prestigious university, both with plans to become college professors, although in different disciplines. From the outside, it might have very well looked as though they were on the same track. But there was a marked difference. It began with their choice of graduate school. One of julia's undergraduate professors thought that she should go with her husband to the more prestigious school to which he, but not she, had been admitted even if it meant that she had "to sweep floors so that he could go and make his way." She was hurt and surprised that her husband was the one "whose career is important. My career was clearly being denigrated. And by a person with whom I'd done some work, so that made me feel bad." Such an experience, reflecting how women in general were not taken seriously in academia, did nothing to bolster her own insecurities. Describing this painful encounter with her undergraduate professor, Julia attempts to explain his remark, revealing the self-doubt that was to haunt her throughout her graduate career: I didn't do much of interest with him so there was no reason for him to think that I was going to do some great new breakthrough. He had every reason to think otherwise, probably. And yet she had done exceptionally well in undergraduate school; she had received excellent grades, was Phi Beta Kappa, and her department "had gone all out to get me one of the big all-university fellowships." None of this seemed to affect the professor's views that her husband's career was the "real one" and should come first. No wonder it was difficult for women like Julia to have confidence in their abilities. Gordon and Julia did not take the professor's advice but instead went to a university to which both had been admitted. Almost from the start, differences emerged in their ability to zero in on what was necessary to succeed in graduate school and in the support they received. Julia took courses she felt like taking and had great disdain when another student would say, "This course is really interesting but how is that going to help you in your exams?" Her orientation, she says, was "totally impractical. You studied what courses

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are interesting, you [took] advantage of the minds around you." She did not have a focus or know what her Ph.D. thesis was going to be. "It was just like being a sort of good student and wanting to go to graduate school but not having a more formulated idea." She said that she wanted to be a professor but she did not, again in her apt words, "do any strategy, calculate my way into a career pattern." The contrast with her husband's career was startling, almost shocking. Gordon always had an idea of what he was going to do. He walks in the door the first day he gets there; he says, "I am Gordon Lee. I'm going to be in your department and here is what I am interested in; let me in your seminar, blah, blah, blah." And he did this right at the beginning. 1 can't say he was taken under someone's wing, but he was immediately taken seriously. Julia says that she could never have done that. 1 would have been scared to death to. 1 never could have had that sense of myself and my project to walk into somebody's office and just say, "Here 1 am. 1 am interested in these kind of things."

Julia's lack of confidence, she feels, was not solely because she was female. There were a number of men who were kind of on the same train I was on, who also did not have the sense that they belonged there. Nevertheless there were difficulties that women encountered trying to gain a graduate education at a prestigious university in the 1960s that men did not. 12 There was, as one scholar describes it, "an atmosphere of disparagement" where neither professors or male graduate students took women seriously.13 One study found that "the most common question women graduate students hear from their professors is 'Are you really serious?' " 14 As a result, Julia says,

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women dropped out in much greater numbers than men. There were a couple that graduated, that went to school with me and have made real careers as academics but there aren't that many women of my age who went to graduate school and made it through. For her, and for other women there was a sense of out-of-placeness but not really wrongness. It wasn't wrong to do this, but it was enough out of place to be remarked. It wasn't natural to do this. This was compounded by the difficulty women had in imagining themselves in a world where, despite the presence of female graduate students, there were almost no female professors. "You can see," Julia says, "that the world out beyond is still all men." 15 There was also outright discrimination. One woman was not hired as a professor because the department chair explicitly refused to hire a woman. His action came as a shock to Julia: I thought that was more of a selection process than it was. You didn't really realize that somebody was going to stand there and say, "we just don't want women in, period." There were other pressures. Women graduate students were enough of a rare breed that professors felt uncomfortable in dealing with them. For that reason, Julia says, physical appearance was used as an inappropriate clue to a student's seriousness of purpose. Julia, who is still "cute and bouncy," felt: There's still this attitude that if you're too cute and bouncy, you can't be serious. There were a few women who did pretty well, but they were the kind like out of Korin cartoons-real heavy, serious intellectual women with a New York bohemian look. To complicate matters, Julia became pregnant. Having a baby only fueled doubts about the seriousness of women students. Three years after Julia started graduate school, when she was about to take her

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preliminary doctoral examinations, she had a baby. The child was unplanned but she thought: No one is going to believe it was unplanned. I was scared to take prelims and I just thought, "Oh I'm never going to make this." And then I got pregnant. The prelims last two weeks; the single most likely day the baby was due was the Saturday between. I didn't take prelims and she carne during that two-week period. Again, the contrast between her husband's career and hers is striking. His work was not delayed: He took his prelim examinations two weeks after his daughter arrived and then was able to start work on his thesis. Julia, on the other hand, was confronted with the difficulties of arranging for child care and dealing with a postpartum depression. I thought I was going to continue, but I was taking a period out. But I couldn't do it with her at horne. I had to find a baby-sitter. And again, you have to think yourself back. There weren't day-care centers and people didn't farm their babies out this way. I couldn't wind myself up. I didn't feel like it. I got this sort of feeling of depression, a sort of headachy feeling, being horne. I just couldn't stay horne with her all the time and I couldn't get my reading done. The pregnancy and birth delayed her taking her doctoral exams for a year and a half. And one week after she took them, Julia, Gordon, and the baby left for France so that Gordon could do research for his dissertation. She, with the same kind of haziness and lack of planning that characterized her graduate career, had only a vague idea of what her thesis topic would be. Again, her lack of strategy about her career-about her life: I had known that we were going-part of the plan was we'd be going to France. The idea was maybe I would be somewhere along so that I could be writing a dissertation at that point. I wanted to go to France at some point. I was happy to be along

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with him in France. I'd never been to Europe. I thought that was great. But I didn't work out a strategy of, "Oh, we're going to be in France, why don't I do a French topic?" I didn't have that kind of strategic sense. Instead, once in France, she stayed home with her baby and then, feeling isolated and lonely, found a baby-sitter and started to go to the library every day. Her reading was, she says, haphazard and aimless. She eloquently describes her experience by retelling a Sartre story: Every day the main character would see this man in the library and he wondered what his principle of education was or research or whatever. And he finally realized that his principle was alphabetical order. And I remember this feeling of identification. It was sort of like that was what I was doing. By the end of their time in France, Gordon's career had so much become the driving force for both their lives that when asked, "When you finished that year, what plans did you have for yourself," she answered, "What we did then was my husband got a job at a prestigious university." They were well on their way to becoming a "two-person career" -and the career was his. Although Julia had managed to develop ambitions beyond the limits set by her early socialization once she was in college, these early experiences continued to make it difficult for her to think of herself as a serious professional. To overcome those early attitudes, she would have had to have received enormous support and validation for her ambitions. The college and graduate school culture of the late 1950S and early 1960s did not provide that. Despite her outstanding record she was urged by the professor she most respected to put her husband's career first. Graduate school did nothing to help her develop an image of herself as a professional woman. Her own lack of strategic planning was compounded by the sense of the illegitimacy of women in the academy and the confusion about trying to be both female and achieving. Marriage and motherhood added to the unreality of thinking about herself as a career woman. Her

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ambivalence about establishing a career was not surprising, given an ideology that did not legitimize a professional career for women and given the lack of support for a nontraditional female life. Jo: "Learning the Role" Jo, like Julia, had difficulty in moving into work that seemed at odds with norms for appropriate female behavior. And like Julia, she started college as a Traditionalist but quickly became introduced to the possibility of a professional life, in her case that of a doctor. As a freshman during orientation, an older male professor looked at Jo's occupational preference tests and at the courses she had done well in and asked her what she wanted to do. When she said, "Something in science," he answered, "Why not medicine?" Her reply was, "I don't want to be a nurse." She was astonished when he said, "I meant why don't you become a doctor?" Until then, it had occurred to no one in her family, including herself, that that was a possibility. Startled, but excited by the prospect, she decided from that interview on to become a premed student. At the end of her third year in college, she married George, whom she had known for some time. He had completed his first year in medical school and she joined him there after her graduation. But unlike her husband, she quit abruptly after a year and a half even though she was doing well academically. She attributes it partially to her dislike of medical students being treated as second-class citizens by their faculty who were primarily science researchers and had contempt for doctors. But perhaps more significant was her struggle to come to terms with what she calls "her role."

[I had] tremendous problems learning the role, or being fearful of learning the role: The decision-making, the responsibility of that decision-making, which I saw as life and death decisions. I had not matured to the point of being able to accept that for myself. It is difficult to assess to what degree gender considerations influenced her thinking. There were twenty women in her class of two hundred, at a time when only 6.5 percent of all medical degrees were

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going to women. 16 This, perhaps, made the acceptance of that role difficult. She was able to comfort herself by the most traditional of female sentiments: I don't have to take this hogwash. I'm going to be married to a doctor. George is doing fine. I'll find something else to do. Her gender certainly made it easier for her to quit. She was supported in her decision to drop out in a way that she had never been supported to become a doctor. Looking back she remembers, in amazement, that despite her excellent academic record, nobody tried to persuade her to stay in medical school. There was a perfunctory interview with a psychiatrist who said "okay." Few thought it unusual for a bright, talented, married woman to drop out of professional school; rather, her being there was strange. Dropping out, despite the bravura, was uncomfortable for Jo, who spent the next few years almost obsessively going to graduate school, picking up two master's degrees-one in biology and one in public health-with no definite career goal in mind. But she continued to be driven by her early religious training that had instilled in her the need to use her "talents" in some constructive way. Uncomfortable with becoming a doctor, and yet clinging to the conviction that she ought to do something with her talents, Jo seemed suspended, unsure what to do. Her hope that her husband's being a doctor would somehow satisfy her need to do good in the world had proved to be illusionary. Jo's difficulties were in some ways different from many of the women in this study. She did not, for example, feel a great conflict between career and motherhood and was able to manage her graduate work and having a child with ease. Hers was rather an inability to incorporate being a doctor with her sense of herself as a female. The early childhood feelings about what her role should be persisted. In her family, it had been her brother who was supposed to be the doctor and, once married, it was her husband. This sense of out-of-placeness, similar to the feeling that Julia experienced, made it difficult for her to persevere. On the other hand, the religious conviction that she should make use of her talents made her uncomfortable with her decision.

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In the years after she dropped out of medical school she struggled with her ambivalence. She lived for an extended period of time in a foreign country where her husband's work had taken them. There was no possibility of pursuing either school or a job and she wondered at that point, despairingly, whether she would ever find a satisfactory career, or have one at all. Debbie: "Before Women's Lib" In Debbie Samson's case, as in Julia's, her husband's career was preeminent and Debbie ended up acceding to its requirements rather than her own. Debbie had started college with the traditional goal of becoming an elementary school teacher. Once in college, Debbie quickly became disenchanted with what she felt were simple-minded courses. On a whim she took a newly-initiated course in Swahili to fulfill her language requirement. As a result she developed an interest in African history. During her junior year she won a scholarship to study in East Africa and found that this trip literally changed her ideas about the world. She came from a politically conservative family but her experience in Africa, studying and living with Africans, turned her into a student activist. On her return she became involved with the radical politics of the Students for a Democratic Society. Debbie's African experience also changed her mind about her future and started her thinking of graduate school in African studies. The fall that she returned, she applied for a graduate fellowship to study in Africa but during that year she developed a serious relationship with a fellow student and was reluctant to go. Pressured by a professor to go to Africa, she went for a month. But the professors she planned to study with had left the country and, in any case, she missed her boyfriend. For Debbie, paradoxically, leaving Africa seemed to be an act of assertion. I just felt that I always did things that everyone else wanted me to do, and that a lot of times I didn't really think about what I really wanted to do. And at that point I guess I thought I didn't want to be there and that I really wanted to get married. For the moment, at least, getting married seemed more urgent than her career. Once she gave up the fellowship, she felt that she

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had foreclosed further opportunities in academic life and considered this an unfortunate but unavoidable result. So she married and for a time worked, miserably, as a bank clerk. Finally, one of her former professors with whom she had kept in touch told her that given her outstanding academic record, it was possible for her to go back to graduate school, and she did. Her husband, Jeff, however, who had continued on in graduate school, increasingly found academic life too tame. He decided to take a job in Southeast Asia as director of a church-operated development project. By this time, Debbie, back in school, had completed all of her work for her master's degree except a thesis and wanted to go on for a doctorate. But this was 1967, Debbie remarks, "before women's lib where you would not have gotten too much encouragement to say what you wanted to do." She finds it ironic that the only person who tried to persuade her to stay in school was an otherwise antifemale professor who wanted Jeff to stay in graduate school. He thought that if Debbie refused to go, Jeff would stay. So the professor urged her, "You have to think of yourself, too, and do your thing too." But Debbie was not prepared to do that, convinced that it was better to let Jeff make the decisions about where they would go despite the fact that her work had become very important to her. She did not have the confidence to insist that her commitment be taken into consideration in her and Jeff's plans. To do so, she would have had to have a kind of support from her husband that was not forthcoming. His career objective remained foremost and neither she nor he questioned that she would follow him to his job.

THE THE

NONTRADITIONALISTS: MOTHERHOOD

MANDATE

Although marriage certainly provided an obstacle to careers for the Nontraditionalists, motherhood as it was constructed in the 1960s posed even more difficulties. Even after the baby boom peaked in 1957, women who chose not to have children continued to be stigmatized as "deviant" for not complying with the requirements of adult womanhood and had to face societal disapproval and self-

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doubt. Once children arrived, motherhood was considered a fulltime job for middle-class women, at least while there were small children. 17 Although the decade of the 1960s saw a dramatic increase in the number of mothers in the labor force with children under age six, they still represented less than a third of all such mothers. Psychologists of the time warned of the trauma that could affect children who were not tended by full-time mothers. Applying the results of a series of studies on maternal deprivation in the 1940S and 1950S that showed the ill effects of institutional upbringing on babies, psychologists extended them to far different, normal family situations and concluded that babies needed full-time care by their mothers. IS The guru of child care, Benjamin Spock, admonished readers of his book, Baby and Child Care, that "if a mother realized clearly how vital her care is to a small child, it may make it easier to decide that the extra money she might earn, or the satisfaction she might receive from an outside job, is not so important after all."19 Such advice became an accepted, commonplace belief for middle-class women. Many middle-class women, therefore, felt that they were faced with a choice-motherhood or a career. This sense of having to make decisions that were either/or becomes clear in the cases of Ruth and Dorothy, both Nontraditionalists who had entered college determined on careers, Ruth as a psychologist and Dorothy as a scientist.

Ruth: "The Thing to Do" Ruth's story is perhaps the most touching of them all, because years later, finally achieving the career she longed for, she is still visibly distressed and marked by the years of struggle to attain it. Her experience also shows how difficult it is even for a determined woman to resist the ideology to marry and have children when friends and relatives-themselves the products of the cultural milieu-apply pressure to conform. And Ruth was determined. Her father's encouragement to be a psychologist remained a potent motivation long after his death when she was thirteen. From the start of her college career, "from day one," she had a deep commitment to becoming a psychologist. But doing so would have required graduate school

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and financial support from her mother, who did not object to her going to college-"it was okay because I could meet someone; that was where you went to meet a husband" -but objected strenuously to graduate school because "her theory was I was narrowing down the field if I had more education than many men." Ruth decided to work for a year, save money, and then go to graduate school. And then she met her future husband-a recently graduated young lawyer-and married within a year. The decision to marry was an agOnIzmg one: I wanted to go back to school and get that graduate degree so I could become a psychologist. 1 also desperately wanted to get out of my house. In my mother's view, nice girls did not move out of the house. I was sort of in this state of not being able to stand living at home, wanting to move out, wanting to go back to school and along came this man and it was the thing to do. Ruth was torn between her desire to pursue a career and the push to "normalcy." It was such a strange thing to want to go back to school and not be ready to get married for, heaven only knows, at least four more years at which time I would be, heaven knows, over the hill. It seemed like such an easy thing to do, like the right thing.

So she struggled with the decision, "I really did," she says, but there was no support for her struggle. Mostly friends couldn't understand why I wouldn't marry this perfectly nice guy who wanted to marry me. There was nothing wrong with him; he had a good future. The attitude mostly was, "Well, what are you waiting for? Do you think a better opportunity will come along?" She married, but she still clung to the idea of going back to school when they could afford it. Then a far more serious decision loomed: whether to have children. Her husband wanted to have children but, Ruth said, "I was ahead of my time. 1 did not want children. 1 wanted a career, 1 wanted to go back to school." Another struggle:

Becoming Adult Women she "dithered" for three years while she tried to decide but, finally, without support for her ambitions, she gave in. Ruth, reflecting the times in which she lived, saw it as an either / or situation: It is silly to start school if you are going to have children. You can't have children if you are going to go to school and the feeling was that if I had children I was making a lifetime commitment.

If not a lifelong commitment, at least a ten-year one. Ten years later-when her second child was in first grade-she returned to school and embarked upon the path to being a psychologist. Dorothy: "I Did What I Felt I Had to Do" Dorothy, like Ruth, capitulated to the demands of full-time motherhood, giving up her much-coveted future as a scientist. Dorothy's inability to pursue her passionate interest in the face of motherhood reveals the difficulty that even highly motivated women found in reconciling the demands of a culturally constructed womanhood with the development of autonomous interests. Developing an interest in science at an early age, she had the full support of her scienceteacher father and of teachers in a gifted school program. By the time she entered college, she was already listed as one of the authors on a published paper. At her university she was selected to become one of a special group of honor students who were invited to choose the professor with whom they wished to work. She seemed well on her way to the scientific career she desired but then, as she describes it rather austerely, "I met the person I later married" and that proved to be "quite a distraction from my other activities." Her parents objected strenuously to her getting married so early but she persevered, waiting until she was eighteen, and marrying at the end of her freshman year. She followed her husband, a science graduate student, to another university where she finished her undergraduate education and, while he finished up his doctorate work, she completed her master's degree. Her husband then had to serve time in military service, but she received a fel-

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lowship and planned to complete her doctoral work at a near-by, first-class university. Then, before she could begin, she became pregnant. Here it becomes difficult to disentangle the interwoven skeins of motivation, social and internal pressure, and sheer fortuity of circumstances. When she and her husband got married, she says, there was no chance that I wouldn't complete my education. It was never basically discussed. It was understood. I could never have gotten married if I didn't think I could continue to exist, in a sense, and I couldn't without an education. I basically thought my husband and I would work together as scientists. Did her husband share that vision? "He seemed to," she says. "Yes." Although originally they had planned not to have children, just as he finished his doctorate and she was about to start hers, they decided to begin a family. But, still, "I didn't imagine that that was going to stop me from continuing with my education." She became seriously ill, however, suffering throughout her pregnancy from toxemia and-after the birth of unanticipated twins-from fevers and weight loss. One of the twins was also sick and it became clear to her that her own illness and the demands of two babies, one of them sickly, made it impossible to continue her schooling. But here is the puzzling part. Although the unexpected sickness and two babies made it difficult for Dorothy to complete her education, she also says, talking about the period after the children were born, "I believed, and I still believe, that it was exceedingly important to spend time with one's children. So I did what I felt I had to do." It is perplexing to try to reconcile that conviction with her lifelong ambition to be a scientist and her earlier determination to finish her graduate training. The pressure of gender expectations might very well have played a part. In terms of her schooling and her career she became pregnant at an inopportune time. But in terms of the stage of her marriage and her husband's accomplishments it was "on time.,,20 She had been married for four years and was twenty-two years old. Her husband had just finished the training phase of his career and would be able

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to support a family for the first time. Did the pressure of gender expectations overcome them both? Was the desire to fulfill appropriate gender tasks, that is, have a child, an irresistible if unconscious pressure? Once having done so, and particularly, given the horrendously unexpected circumstances-her sickness, two babies, and one of these quite sickly-the pressure to fulfill motherly duties and stay home and take care of the infants was perhaps too strong to resist, even for this highly motivated, accomplished woman. No

GROUND

TO

STAND

ON

The Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists had entered college with different expectations, resulting from differing gender socialization in their early years. But as adult development specialists and the experience of study participants demonstrate, socialization is a process that continues throughout life as adults continue to respond to changing circumstances. 21 What happened to study participants in college, therefore, had the potential of making an enormous impact. And, in fact, new opportunities encouraged three Traditionalists, Jo, Julia, and Debbie, to develop nontraditional interests, providing evidence that such change was possible. But in reality, little in the structure of college and graduate school in the late 1950S and early 1960s provided women with messages that were different from their earlier years. The persistence of the same kind of socializing forces, more than the influence of earlier experiences, accounted for the decisions study participants made during their college years. The continuation of a traditional gender ideology promoted specific expectations for women. The equation of female adulthood with marriage and motherhood put pressure on all the women to assume their feminine roles by becoming wives and mothers and to tailor their own ambitions so that it would not interfere with that goal. Once they became mothers, the cultural requirement of full-time motherhood was almost impossible to reconcile with attention to professional development. The commonplace assumption that the male career was the significant one and that everything else had to accommodate to it added

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further difficulties. Women in this study found it hard to envision two careers when the model of the two-person career was the norm. The lack of models for doing anything differently meant that there was no assurance that it was possible. Under such circumstances, women needed more confidence than men did to assert themselves and their professional interests. Few of the women in this study had that confidence; all were plagued by a self-doubt that came from lack of encouragement. Even the most determined among them found it hard to pursue a course that, at the best, would be considered nontraditional and, at the most bruising, deviant. These women found, in sociologist Dorothy Smith's phrase, "no ground to stand on" for nontraditional ambitions-no support, ideological or otherwise, to tell them that what they wanted to do was all right and feasible. 22 The world would have to change before the women in this study could.

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AT HOME ---0---

Julia, with her dissertation still not completed, found herself unhappily at home taking care of her two daughters. Despite all of her struggles-to delay marriage and to get a Ph.D. and to become a professor-she was immersed in a daily life that "was like Mom's daily life had been." Julia was angry about it, but neither she nor her husband could understand what had happened: "Gordon was as surprised as I was." They hurled disjointed charges at each other: JULIA: Why is this; what happened? GORDON: I thought you wanted a career. JULIA: Why can't you make me finish this dissertation? It looks like I am going nowhere. GORDON: Why have you done this? At least part of the answer lay in julia's assuming major responsibility for child care. Although Julia had already faced obstacles that kept her from pursuing her graduate studies in the vigorous, tunnel-visioned way that her husband had, it became even more problematic once the children arrived. Julia had to delay her doctoral exams while her husband did not. She and her husband quickly fell into traditional roles. Of course there are sets of expectations about what you're doing and one of which was that I was the primary child care taker and the primary housekeeper.

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Julia was completely unprepared for what motherhood entailed and how difficult it was to reconcile it with an ongoing career. I didn't even picture what it was, like the baby-sitting and childcare problem never even dawned on me till it was there, in our laps. It didn't even occur to me. Julia was not unusual in being unprepared for the responsibilities of parenthood. Most of the women in this study started their stint of full-time mothering unaware of its day-to-day realities. Although they had been conditioned from childhood to expect to be mothers, they actually knew little of what motherhood entailed.! As Ann Oakley has pointed out, there is a glorification and romanticized view of motherhood that conceals its difficulties and day-to-day struggles, while publicizing only its rewards. 2 Motherhood in midtwentieth-century America, similar to that in most Western, industrialized societies, involved "isolation and constant, unrelieved responsibility.,,3 Isolated in their nuclear household, women confronted the physical and emotional demands of motherhood alone. 4 At a time when the notion that fathers should also be responsible for child care had not yet occurred to most people, including mothers, and day care was virtually nonexistent, mothers had little assistance except occasionally from family members or friends. Friendship networks that could provide some support were necessarily transient: Most families in this study moved at least once, and usually more than once, in pursuit of better job opportunities for the husbands, forcing wives to constantly establish and reestablish support systems. Not all of the women in this study reacted to motherhood in the same way; there were Contented Housewives and Discontented Housewives. A number of factors distinguished the two groups. Most obviously, the Contented Housewives enjoyed doing domestic activities, including child care, more than the unhappy ones. They also differed in the conditions and circumstances in which child rearing took place. Many of the Discontented Housewives, for example, did not have enough money for the baby-sitters who would have provided relief, and some of them lived in isolated circumstances. Yet poor and isolated women could be found in each group,

At Home as could those with traditional and nontraditional goals. Whatever their material circumstances, the Discontented Housewives seemed to be drowning in motherhood-they experienced it as a loss of sense of self. For the Contented Housewives, on the other hand, motherhood was an enriching and rewarding time. One key difference that seems to distinguish the two groups most markedly is their response to the ideology of motherhood. Both groups accepted it as right and natural that they should stay home with their children full-time, but the Contented Housewives were able to shape and modify the ideology in a way that enhanced their sense of self while the overwhelmed Discontented Housewives could not. The Contented Housewives did this by exerting what Oakley has referred to as a sense of "mastery" over their lives. 5 They were able to think of themselves as controllers of events rather than as being controlled by them. It could, of course, be argued that none of the women had actual control of their situation, buffeted about as they were by the demands of their husbands' careers and by the never-ending claims of children. Nevertheless, whether motherhood was experienced as a loss of self or enriching had a great deal to do with whether a woman was able to devise strategies that gave her a sense of being in control.

A

SENSE

OF

CONTROL

Contented Housewives were of two types: the Time-Outers who thought of their time at home as temporary and the Long-Termers, who gave little thought to a life other than that of full-time domesticity. The six Contented Time- Outers had several different strategies for maintaining a sense of mastery over their lives. The most important one, which they all seemed to share, involved their ability to conceptualize the time spent in full-time mothering as only one phase of their life cycle. From the start they seemed to think that they would be devoting only a delimited period of time to full-time mothering and that at some time, often unspecified, they would turn to something else, also frequently unspecified. They used expressions like being "on hold" or putting paid work

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"on the back burner" to describe the temporary sense they had of their child rearing years. By thinking of their full-time childrearing years as not permanent and being able to project a different kind of commitment in the future, they avoided the trapped feeling that was so characteristic of the Discontented Housewives. Instead, as several mentioned, they were able to consider their time at home as a special period in their lives-a time to enjoy their children and to have the luxury of a kind of freedom and lack of structure that they did not expect to have ever again. A sense of confidence about their future was no doubt reinforced by the fact that all six of the Time- Outers were college graduates, five had some graduate education, and half of them had done some professional or semiprofessional work. These previous experiences meant that, although they defined themselves primarily as wives and mothers, they had had some success in arenas outside of the home. Debbie had become a Nontraditionalist in college and had almost finished her master's degree in African history when her husband took a job in Southeast Asia. Debbie wanted to finish her degree but decided that she had no choice but to follow him. She knew, however, that their time away would be limited, although she did not know exactly how long it would be. She deliberately decided to use the time-which turned out to be five years-to have children. Debbie's feelings about full-time motherhood were ambivalent: I looked at my own situation with my own mother, who had stayed with kids and we didn't have a wonderful relationship. And in some cases some of the kids got really screwed up. Nevertheless, like most women of her generation, "I thought it was probably the thing to do." She became pregnant during her first year in Asia and had her second child two years later. Debbie felt that she was postponing, not abandoning, her education. By conceptualizing a specific period of her life as a time for child rearing, she was able to maintain a sense of control. Like Debbie, Betsy considered her time at home temporary. Betsy, a woman of enormous energy, was involved in a challenging social work job but after her first child was born, "all of a sudden

At Home 1 fell in love with mothering and decided 1 would not go back to work." She also set a limit, deciding, "I will stay home until the kids are at school." Betsy had another strategy for maintaining a mastery of the situation, one that other Contented Housewives also used. She imposed a structure of her own devising on the formless shape that domesticity could take. 1 don't know how consciously 1 programmed myself, but since I'm a very programmed person it was probably intentionallooking back at it. 1 kept myself busy, 1 didn't sit at home and watch the soap operas. That was the beginning of my real involvement in my nonprofit volunteer career work, primarily putting on a couple of tennis tournaments and Las Vegas nights kind of things, getting involved in the United Way. Athletics always meant a lot in her life, and motherhood did not interfere with this. 1 used to have it programmed. My son went to nursery school and got home at one o'clock. 1 could go to an exercise class, play tennis and, if 1 was real fast, 1 could get nine holes of golf in-but 1 had to play by myself-and be home in time. For others, it was that very lack of structure that made life at home appealing. Dorothy, the Nontraditionalist who had aspired to be a scientist from childhood on but gave it up when she had twins, "liked the lack of structure. 1 liked the ability to do what 1 wanted to do when 1 wanted to. 1 liked the opportunity to be with my children. 1 liked the freedom." Dorothy also had this sense of her time at home as a phase of her life-"I didn't believe that 1 was going to do it forever." Dorothy had to spend some of the time dealing with one of her sickly twins. But she also imposed enough of a structure on her life to establish a cooperative nursery school, acting as its director for two years. Ann, a Traditionalist who had gotten a degree in math education "in case" she ever needed to help out, also liked the flexibility that gave her time for "playing with the baby and doing those kinds of things that you do with babies, sewing and decorating." But she also

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had a sense that she would do other things in the future.' "I didn't know when that would be. After the children no longer needed me at home. 1 did not know how long that would be." So she continued to prepare for a life after child-rearing by continuing to take one course a semester to finish her master's degree in math. It was important. 1 did it because teaching required a master's degree at that time. And if 1 was going to remain in teaching, which was my goal at that time, 1 had to have that degree. It was necessary.

The other group of Contented Housewives, the four LongTermers, had no sense of time limitation on their full-time mothering. All Traditionalists, they were women who were the most satisfied with the role of full-time mothering. The three who had not graduated from college did not seem to be bothered by the kind of ambivalence that characterized many women. They had never been involved in paid work that they found compelling and turned to domestic life for satisfaction. Only the fourth one, Cynthia, a college graduate, used motherhood as a way of avoiding coming to grips with her self-doubt about a career as a writer. But she also threw herself zestfully into mothering. The Long-Termers accepted the ideology of motherhood perhaps most completely of all the women, but they were able to use it as a basis for actively creating lives for themselves that enhanced their sense of self. Married to professional or business men, they were able to live comfortably with little financial strain. When Cynthia, whose early recognition as a writer had frightened her and who sought refuge in marriage, became pregnant, she decided it was an opportune time to quit her job in advertising. She did not like it, and her husband was well on his way in his career as an academic. She then found herself captivated by the mystique of motherhood. 1 decided that 1 ought to stop working, that it is my responsibility to this unborn child and to myself to stop working. And not to make any definite plans to go back to work after the baby is born. 1 don't know where it came from exactly, but 1 seem

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to have, at this point, a full-blown ideology about parenting, family life, femininity, all that stuff. With this sudden acquired ideology, I found that I wanted to be the traditional mommy. A friend of hers was planning the timing of her children very carefully so that she could continue her career, but Cynthia, deeply involved in mothering, "was very contemptuous of planning. I thought, they'll come, they'll come. I was a pre-hippie earth mother." Part of the ideology of motherhood that she had incorporated so fully and believed was that "I really saw that it was necessary-thought, believed-that it was necessary for my kids' well-being for me to be there all the time." Cynthia stopped her own writing after the birth of her first child, no longer even keeping a journal. She "would sort of smile inwardly and say, 'Well your reproductive capacity is now biological and before it was on paper.' " She seemed to believe that she could do one or the other, not both. Cynthia constructed a life for herself that meant, she says, that she did not think of herself solely as a wife and mother. Rather she thought of herself as a bohemian. She established an amateur theater, and also worked as an actress. In addition, she did some editing work at home and had some casual romantic affairs. Despite her exaltation of the motherhood experience, she also had another reason for being a full-time mother-the same that had been part of the motivation for marrying. She lacked the self-confidence to think about committing herself to work outside the home. When she became interested in mythology, for example, her husband encouraged her to take a course in anthropology. It was fun. But when I started thinking about going on and pursuing an academic discipline, carving out a subject matter for myself, I got very scared.

Cynthia, like others in this study, was afraid to take that leap to defining herself as an autonomous person. I think I got very frightened when I got even that close to thinking about myself as someone with a professional life that someone else didn't direct-a life that I would have to define.

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She fled back to safety-she got pregnant again with her third child. "It meant that I couldn't do anything, I couldn't go to school fulltime, for example, for a while." But she did find a cause that became a passion for the next five years-the antiwar movement. She was able to take care of the kids at the same time-"there was a lot of shlepping and marching and planning marches and the kids were along." That involvement, and a young child, allowed her to postpone thinking about the future, which she found so terrifying. Although she and her husband would talk over the years about her getting a job, neither of them saw it as a reality. As Cynthia notes, "I didn't make any plans for it, or acquire any special training." Marriage and motherhood provided a socially acceptable reason not to push herself beyond domesticity and at the same time she very much enjoyed the sense of being an "earth mother." The other Long-Termers did not have Cynthia's kind of conflict. Nancy, who worked in the early years of her marriage and motherhood to support her husband through law school, was delighted when she could at last stay at home. Nancy became pregnant when she was in college and she and her fiance married quickly. She dropped out of college to support her husband and utilized her mother-in-law as the baby-sitter. When her husband graduated and she finally was able to stay home, she loved it. "I was never bored. I liked to do all kinds of things. I like to read, I love to do crafts and nature." She was also involved in volunteer work and in activities at school with her children. "I enjoyed that. I think that was a very special time and an important time to be able to participate. I felt good about it." Claudia also managed to structure a satisfactory family life for herself in contrast to the constriction and chaos of her early years. As a child, her Roy Rogers fantasies and wrestling prowess had been suppressed by her religious conversion to being good. The trauma of her mother's early death and Claudia's subsequent depression meant that she had little energy to devote to her artistic interests. Once married, she supported her husband through medical school by working at a job in advertising that she did not like. Staying home gave her the opportunity to work at her art.

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73

My life started, really, after I quit work, because that was when I really started to work. I had a lovely baby, who wasn't colicky and slept and ate and was happy. So every afternoon I painted. Claudia also did all of the housework, the cleaning, the cooking, and the sewing. I made all of the childrens' clothes. I loved that. That was a real creative outlet for me. I would use basic patterns and then do a lot of my own designing, which was fun. I really got into gourmet cooking. That was a nice outlet for me. She also felt very good about running the house efficiently. I was up every morning; my house was clean by nine; I was sewing and making these nice clothes; I was cooking good meals. When I went to the hospital to have the baby, it was in August, but my son's fall wardrobe had already been sewn, and the freezer was filled with food. But I enjoyed doing it well. And that is where my satisfaction came from. Helen, whose working-class parents had prevented her from going to college, also settled in happily as the wife of a wealthy, selfemployed businessman. I liked it all. I liked keeping house, cooking and taking care of the children and knitting and all those kinds of things. I used to make all their clothes. I did it all. We used to entertain a lot of times, especially because my husband was developing clients. She organized her life so she was able to find some time for herself. I was always involved in something. I took course work. I always was involved in my husband's business. I did all of the bookkeeping for our business. I did all of the client accounts and stuff like that. We had all those records at home so that I could work on them. For several years, she worked on most Sundays, acting as a hostess in her mother-in-law's restaurant, and doing the books. At one point when she moved to a neighborhood where she knew no

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one, she studied the piano seriously, practicing many hours a day after her children were asleep. She found her metier, however, after her last move, when she became involved in a newcomer's club, a membership organization of several hundred. Rapidly rising to its presidency, she became a professional volunteer in the community, ultimately serving as a major official on the governing board of her town. Long-Termers achieved a sense of mastery through their ability to accept the ideology of motherhood, yet construct a life that they enjoyed. On a daily basis, they had a sense of control, organizing their activities and their time in a way that was personally beneficial and rewarding and that prevented them from feeling overwhelmed by the responsibilities and drudgery of full-time motherhood. These activities also served as a complement to motherhood. It meant that they did not rely solely on motherhood for their identification. They, like all the Contented Housewives, also felt an enhanced sense of self-esteem by managing motherhood well. A Loss

OF

SELF

In contrast to the Contented Housewives, the twelve Discontented Housewives experienced motherhood as a sense of loss-of self, of control. Although the Discontented Housewives' days seemed identical in many ways with those who were happier, filled with activities with children and other mothers, some of which they enjoyed, they were disturbed by the feeling that they were not in charge, that their actions were being shaped and controlled by demands and needs external to themselves. Unable to envision a future when things might change, they felt stuck in a situation that had no end. 6 Some fantasized extreme escapes, like Evelyn and Ruth, who dreamed about running away. The Nontraditionalists among them, unlike the Nontraditionalists who were Time- Outers, despaired that they would ever have an opportunity to act on their ambitions. Most of them, except Jo, were further burdened by the guilt and disappointment of discovering that they did not enjoy being at home with their children. That was not the way it was supposed to be, according to the dictates of the ideology of motherhood.

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75

This ideology allowed no space for individual attitudes toward child rearing, no recognition that not all women wanted to be mothers or should be mothers. Without that acknowledgment, the Discontented Housewives were filled with a sense of failure for not meeting both their own and cultural expectations of fulfilled motherhood. 7 It was as though they had flunked the major cultural test in femininity. Ashamed of themselves, they told few people about their unhappiness, often not even admitting it to themselves. This secrecy compounded their terrible sense of isolation. Depressed by what they viewed as their own inadequacy, they felt overwhelmed, bereft of all control. Their self-esteem plummeted. Gail, a Traditionalist, had fertility problems and took four years to have a baby. She thought that she would be overjoyed with the birth of her son. But by the time he was six months old Gail felt completely overwhelmed and experienced a real sense of loss of self. She told a friend who was a counselor: I love this child and I wanted him so badly, but it is not enough. I am not really satisfied. 1 am my son's mother and Ken's wife and Gail is just completely gone. Can you believe that after six months and 1 wanted this so much? During the years that she was trying to become pregnant, Gail had had an exciting job as a teacher of an innovative math program. After that experience, she found as a mother "there is an ego need that is not met. 1 was used to that kind of stimulation and excitement, and 1 didn't have it. And so that was just missing." Although she did things with other women who had children her son's age, she did not enjoy them. It was a good way to pass the time. But it wasn't something 1 wanted to do for very long. 1 did these things more for my son or to get out of the house.

She felt angry about her predicament but she primarily felt guilty. This was not the way she was supposed to feel. Thinking back to that time she says, "I wasn't always in tears, I wasn't always angry, but 1 really don't wish to go back to that time." Frances, who had deliberately become a teacher so that she could

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support her husband's career as an academic, also remembers crying a lot after the children were born, but she hid the extent of her depression from herself. She found it difficult to confront what she considered a failure to live up to her female responsibilities. "I guess I wasn't prepared psychologically to accept the fact that I wouldn't be happy as a housewife and this thought, somehow, was never allowed to surface." When she enrolled in a Ph.D. program, taking a course each semester, she rationalized that she was still a housewife. "That took up most of my time and that was my responsibility." She had vague thoughts of teaching a course at a community college, fitting it somehow into her domestic schedule. Evelyn also felt guilty about how unhappy she was. She had had few plans for her future and gratefully dropped out of college after her first year when her husband's proposal of marriage seemed to provide the answer. Evelyn certainly had a feeling of "not having any control over my own self," which is understandable, given the five children she had within eight years. The circumstances in which she had children also affected her adversely. She started having babies after moving to an area where "I had no relatives, no support system. I think this was really why it was so tough, those early years." She also had little money and not much help from her husband who had to work long hours at his job as a teacher and coach. "I was exhausted at the end of the day. My husband didn't come home until seven or eight o'clock at night." In addition, some of her children did not sleep through the night-one awakened regularly until she was four years old. Evelyn, a devout Catholic, was surrounded by women in similar circumstances who, ostensibly at least, seemed content with their lives. "Why can't I be?" she wondered. They all had large families, and the ones we knew were for the most part happy and well-adjusted. I kept trying to figure out why the thought of having eight or ten kids made me so depressed. Surrounded by these families, she felt the pressure of expectation. But "1 couldn't figure out why I was always so depressed." She did not let anyone know about it, including herself. "I wouldn't have

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admitted it to myself that 1 hated it. Everybody else reinforcing that this was normal." As Evelyn's circumstances-not enough money, no help, an overworked husband, little support-make clear, the particularities of a woman's situation often could make the difference between what was bearable or not. For Discontented Housewives better circumstances might have improved their day-to-day experiences, but they could not have erased a sense of not being in control of their lives, as Virginia and Karen found out. When Virginia, who had dropped out of architecture school because of its many obstacles, had her first baby she remained isolated. Soon she had three small children, no transportation, and was living in a cold climate that kept them all indoors. Her friends lived in another part of town, but she was so broke that she could not afford the toll call. Asked why she had a third child, she replied, "I remember that Betty Friedan said that there was kind of a pattern there that if you got too bored then you had another child because it would take up your time. 1 think there was an element of that." 1 was so trapped. My husband worked probably seventy hours a week. 1 had no car. We had no money. 1 had no freedom. My big treat was once a month we would go to the library and it was a terrible, terrible adjustment. It was a horrible period in my life. Virginia was persuaded that the life she was leading was how it was supposed to be. 1 bought into this traditional role at that point and 1 thought that was just the way things were. It was a woman's job to not let these things get you down and make the best of the situation and support this man. Finally they moved to a town where she had more access to neighbors and where her circumstances changed dramatically for the better. We moved into a neighborhood where there were lots of other couples who were very similar to us in education and age and

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financial status and a number of things. So that when husbands were out of town, we had a little extra money, so we could go out and do things and start projects. She remembers vividly one project. One day we decided we would redecorate this one woman's bedroom. Her husband was out of town and he came back and it was a totally different bedroom. We painted and made drapes and just had a wonderful time. We had a lot of fun. Although she was in much better circumstances, she found that it was still not enough to keep her satisfied. It occurred to me that redecorating each other's bedrooms and playing golf together was really not much to do with the next thirty years of your life. And then her life changed again, this time for the worse. They moved once again, her husband was gone all the time at work, and she hated losing her wonderful support group and being fifteen hundred miles away from her family. She is distressed to recall that I had moments, for example, when the high point of my day was when "As the World Turns" comes on, and you think, "My God, what is going on?" It would have been difficult for Virginia to maintain a sense of control and equanimity in the face of her husband Michael's rollercoaster career as a sales manager. But Virginia also felt a sense of loss because she felt submerged in her traditional role. Persuaded that that "was just how things were," and with no sense that it might change in the future, she clung to her husband's coattails trying, as she said, to make the best of the situation. Karen, who had led an active life as a nurse, also experienced more and less supportive environments but, unlike Virginia who rationalized her situation by saying this was how it had to be, she was furious at being stuck in the motherhood role. Karen spent the first six months as a mother living out in the country.

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1 liked the place but 1 was so lonely. 1 mean 1 was just incredibly lonely with this screaming, colicky baby, day after day with no neighbors around. And 1 remember saying to my landlady that 1 was really going out of my mind. She said, "Not to worry. 1 will teach you how to pickle." 1 said, "I don't think that is quite what 1 had in mind." They then moved to a large city where she had another baby and adopted a third, despite her unhappiness with being a full-time mother. If she was so unhappy, why did she have more children? She was still conforming to cultural norms. 1 did what 1 was supposed to do, just like getting married. There was a part of me that wanted to do that, but there was also that part that, you know, this is what is expected of me. I'm going to get it all over with, and 1 got it all over with real fast. By the time 1 was twenty-five 1 had all my children. Life was better when she moved to a new apartment complex where all of the wives had husbands in graduate school. Everyone had the little kids running around. It was a warm climate, the kids could go out a lot. Somebody always had a car so if a kid had an earache you could leave one and go off with the other. We took care of each other. 1 was the village nurse and somebody else grew vegetables for all of us, and somebody else was the attorney. So we could always get advice from somebody for whatever. It was almost like a commune. She tried to fit in: People were really into baking and cooking. And 1 tried to be, 1 really tried to be a good wife. 1 tried to get into it. 1 mean 1 made my clothes, 1 made the kids' clothes. 1 tried to get into cooking. 1 tried to use my energies to do something. 1 read insatiably. But even in the supportive atmosphere of the apartment complex there was not enough to make her happy. She was "desperate for a

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conversation with somebody who could talk about ideas. Absolutely desperate." She wanted to talk to people about what she was reading. Despite being surrounded by neighbors, "It was real lonely." 1 was never one who could sit and play with a baby. The boredom just overcame me. And frustration. I'm not a baby person. She tried to structure her life so that she could spend as little time with her children as possible: "I meant it was still almost twentyfour hours a day. But 1 would set up the recreation room and invite kids over." Karen felt even more discontented and frustrated because her attempts to talk about her restlessness were met with incomprehension-or rebuff-by her husband, neighbors, and friends. She tried to tell people: "I'm going nuts when I'm with these kids." 1 was aware of my incredible rage. 1 would try to talk to my husband about how 1 was going crazy. And he would say, "Well, it must be just terrible. 1 know 1 couldn't do it." And then he would take off. It was just very clear to him that that was my role, and there was nothing to be discussed. This lack of understanding compounded her guilt at not loving motherhood-"I'm going nuts when I'm with these kids. They are really cute and 1 am not good for them, and I'm short-tempered." Finally, in 1970, she happened upon The Feminine Mystique and found out that there were other housewives as unhappy as she, that she was "not the only one." On the one hand I was enraged, on the other hand I felt vindicated. Because all the things I had kept trying to say, and the people would look at me as if 1 were crazy-and they did-I kept saying "Maybe Jerry and I should switch places. He really does not want to be working and I really do." Karen had one neighbor, who had been an English major, with whom she could discuss ideas. After Karen read The Feminine Mystique she tried to talk to her neighbor about it, but "she was so

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threatened by it, she closed up in her house. I mean she had always thought I was a little strange anyway." Her rage, she says, got even worse. But for the time being, there was little she could do about it. Three of the Nontraditionalists, Julia, Ruth, and Jo, had special difficulties dealing with their time at home. All of them, unhappy at not being able to pursue a professional life, had periods of despair. Ruth, who had desperately wanted a career as a psychologist but had felt absolutely compelled to marry and then have children, felt the pressure to conform by having two children, not one. Like Karen, she wanted to get through it all as quickly as possible. Because after I had the first one, you couldn't have one, it wasn't done. It was wrong. If I had to have another one-when I realized having one was going to be as bad as I thought it wasI said, "I am going to have them as close, very close together, and get this over with because after two I could stop." Like so many of the Discontented Housewives she experienced motherhood as loss of self. I hated giving up my entire life. I hated becoming a nothing which is what I felt had happened to me, that I had totally lost all identity and disappeared. Ruth felt her time at home "was the absolute low point in my life. I mean, if I ever came close to being suicidal myself, it was then." She saw it as a kind of curse from her difficult mother and as a punishment. She thought: I probably deserve this because my mother always told me that when I had children I would be punished for all my sins. And I arranged it so it was. She did try to take up some domestic activities, such as sewing and cooking. "I hated it. My mind was decaying." Like so many of the others she felt isolated. "I would take the kids to the park and I would be the only one in the whole park. It was very lonely, very confining. " But getting out of the house and being with other people was not

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satisfactory either. As the children got older, she became involved with the PTA and the school library. "It was better than being home. At least I had friends and I met people and I was out of the house, but it really wasn't fulfilling." It was clear that little at home was fulfilling for Ruth but, immobilized by depression, she felt unable to do anything to help herself. Jo, who had dropped out of medical school, also felt immobilized when she followed her husband to his job in a small, isolated town in a foreign country. Unlike most of the Discontented Housewives, Jo liked many things about being at home. In the small community there was a great deal of socializing, all of it family-oriented. At one point they had four foster children living with them and Jo had a second baby: "I really got into being a mom." But although Jo enjoyed that activity, she was not really content. I was very frustrated being at home too. I really was tired of being stuck in the role and not being the intellectual person that I knew myself to be. Being real frustrated with not having any plans either. I did not know if I would ever have a career at that point and, if so, what that would be. It felt that the traditional role wasn't enough. Jo was also displeased by the low status that motherhood conferred. As Oakley has pointed out, there are contradictions in the ideology: "Motherhood as an occupation is idolized but socially downgraded by the dominant culture." 8 In the community in which Jo lived, the doctors, including her husband, had a lot of status and respect, and the wives were merely doctors' wives. Jo felt that "there wasn't a whole lot of value placed on being a mom and a wife, that the real value was in what you did for your job." This attitude was particularly painful for Jo, who had dropped out of medical school, gotten two master's degrees, and was still without any sense of career direction. It further exacerbated her sense of failure at having talents and not using them, which contradicted the religious beliefs that she had developed in childhood. This sense of failure was shared by all of the Nontraditionalists who were Discontented Housewives, all of whom felt trapped in domesticity. Unlike Debbie and Dorothy, Nontraditionalists who

At Home were Contented Housewives, they were not able to think of their time at home as a temporary delay in their professional plans. Without a sense of control that such planning could provide, they experienced motherhood as a loss of self.

MOTHERHOOD

AND

FEMALE

IDENTITY

Looking at the women in this study, all of whom stayed home with their children, it is clear that the ideology of motherhood succeeded in persuading them that their adult identity could only be fulfilled in their roles as full-time mothers. The discourse on femininity, in which domesticity and the workplace were presented as mutually exclusive, dichotomous choices for middle-class women, acted as a powerful force in restricting their choices. They were also responding to the reality of limited opportunities for women outside the home, which they experienced in their own lives. They had met with discrimination in college and graduate school and had found few role models to emulate in the professions. They also found little support for managing marriage, motherhood, and a career. Once they had children, the material circumstances in which child rearing took place and whether they liked doing domestic tasks had some influence in determining whether they enjoyed staying home. Two of the Discontented Housewives, Karen and Virginia, found life more bearable when they were surrounded by supportive friends and neighbors. But it was not enough for some of the women. In order to be satisfied with their time at home, the women had to feel some sense of control over their lives. The Contented Housewives who were Time- Outers managed to do that by conceptualizing their time at home as limited, and both they and the Long-Termers organized their daily lives in a way that gave them a sense of competence and satisfaction. Without this sense of mastery, the Discontented Housewives felt themselves drowning in what seemed a time without end. Perhaps, worst of all, they felt that they were not living up to the cultural standards of appropriate womanhood. Those standards would have to change before both the Contented and Discontented Housewives could extricate themselves from full-time motherhood.

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FROM HOUSEWIVES TO CAREER WOMEN ---0---

While the women in this study were spending time at home, dramatic changes in the social reality of women's lives were taking place and new social norms for female behavior were emerging. These changes made the world of the 1970S a far different place than the one in which they had grown up. More women worked outside of the home, increased divorces and a lower birthrate made marriage and family seem less of a lifetime commitment, and burgeoning women's movement and self-fulfillment movements provided the rationale and ideology for new choices.! All of this made the 1970S a decisive decade for the people in this study. Most of them left fulltime domesticity and were on their way to becoming committed careerists. As members of a cohort born between 1936 and 1944 they were, for the most part, approaching, or at, midlife when they experienced the full impact of society's changing ideas. They were not like their younger sisters who reached adulthood in the 1970s, who were surrounded by new models for female behavior and who took advantage of heretofore unavailable educational and occupational possibilities. For that younger generation, marriages could be delayed and motherhood postponed as energies were turned to pursuits formerly labeled nontraditional. 2 Responding to the dramatic societal changes was more problematic for women, like the twenty-two in this study, who were already deeply embroiled in the consequences of earlier choices, married

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and at home with children, and with limited employment or educational experiences. Luckily, they were still young enough to take advantage of broadening options, unlike those who were older and for whom it was too late. 3 When they left home for outside work they became part of the over 50 percent of women who were employed by the end of the 1970S.4 Study participants also found a larger array of occupational choices than had been available when they were younger. Although women had been entering paid employment in increasing numbers from the 1950S on, it was not until the 1970S that noticeable inroads were made on sex-segregated male professions. While the number of women, compared to males, in these professions was modest, it nevertheless represented enough of a shift to be encouraging. 5 The new professionals were also visible because media attention focused on the first woman in each nontraditional field. Changes were also taking place in the reality of mothering. By the end of the 1970s, the norm had "tipped" from the previous pattern of stay-at-home mothers to mothers in the labor force. 6 Smaller families, with children spaced closer together, also meant that women would have more adult years free of intensive child care. 7 Eighteen of the study participants had one to three children, with an average of 2.5 children, a little below the national average of 2.8. More than two-thirds of them had their last child by the age of thirty. As child rearing took up less time during a woman's life and more mothers worked outside the home, a shift in ideas about motherhood was inevitable. It became clear to many that motherhood could not provide the only definition of a woman's life. 8 The ideological pressure for full-time motherhood was dissipating and the women in this study took advantage of it. Sixteen joined the work force or went to school when one of the children was still in their preschool years, although ten did so only on a part-time basis. The chances that marriages would be stable also declined as divorce rates, which had already been on the rise since the middle of the nineteenth cent,ury, began to increase at an even faster rate in the 1960s and 1970S.9 Although the women in this study were all selected because they were still married to their original partners,

From Housewives to Career Women

the accelerating divorce rate could only underscore for them, as it did for all women, that they could no longer rely on a husband for economic and emotional support for a lifetime. The increases in labor-force participation and shifts in fertility patterns and divorce provided the preconditions for change. For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the reality of a large number of women's lives no longer conformed to the traditional norms of a female domestic life. lo These changes in the dimensions of women's lives were responsible, in part, for the beginning of a full-fledged women's movement at the end of the 1960s. At the heart of this movement was a questioning of past definitions of female capacity and roles, a growing awareness that women's opportunities were circumscribed simply because they were women, and a new understanding that many of the norms and beliefs that shaped women's lives were ideological rather than natural or inborn. 11 The women's movement had a powerful effect on those in this study even though most of them did not participate in any formal feminist organizations. For Ann, it "helped to clarify a lot of the issues. People used to know they were miserable but they didn't really understand all of the reasons why." The fact that so many were sharing in this new understanding made women feel supported and encouraged them, as Marilyn said, to "take hold of their lives." Karen, who had found no sympathy for her unhappiness with motherhood from either her husband or friends, feels passionately: It saved my life. It explained so much of what had happened in my life. It explained my unhappiness at home when being told there was something wrong with me. It explained everything for me. I needed that explanation. I needed to understand how I'd gotten where I was, and why I felt the way I did.

For Nancy, who became a banker, the women's movement was most important for its effect on her family. It has made it easier for me to do what I am doing. It is as though I am not the only person in the world who is telling

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their family, "Look now. What I have to do is important and you guys just hang tight there." They are aware of this. It has made everyone aware that I have the right to do this. More subtle than the women's movement in supporting women's aspirations was the development in the 1970S of a new preoccupation with self-fulfillment. Not confined to the privileged few, but rather, in pollster Daniel Yankelovich's words, "an authentic grass-roots phenomenon," 12 the attention to self-fulfillment involved an individual search for self-expression and self-development, unrestrained by the usual societal norms, and provided an encouragement for everyone to, as the slogan suggested, "do your own thing." 13 According to Yankelovich, by the end of the I970S only 20 percent of Americans had been untouched by this emphasis on self.14 This new emphasis provided a kind of cultural permission to consider one's own needs and proved crucial in freeing women in this study to take action on their own behalf. This focus on self-fulfillment, along with other cultural, employment, and demographic shifts, emboldened those in this study to look after their own interests. Such encouragement, combined with a woman's movement that pinpointed some of the sources of their second-class status, provided the necessary backdrop against which those in this study were able to make choices about leaving a life of full-time domesticity. Factors such as financial need and age of children definitely played a role in the timing of their decisions. Other reasons, usually considered predictive of whether women would be employed or not-such as whether their mothers were in the work force-were not as pertinent for this transition generation. Living during a period of rapid social change and increasing opportunities, women such as those in the study became involved in professional work whether their mothers had been employed or not. IS Primarily these white, middleclass women were motivated by a shift in ideology that said it was all right to leave full-time motherhood and by the new opportunities that made it possible for them to go back to school and participate in hitherto closed professions. 16 These motivations make them different from the vast number of women who joined the labor force

From Housewives to Career Women because of financial reasons and who were consigned to low-income, low-status occupations and attests to the class and race privilege that shaped the kind of choices study participants were able to make. 17 Those in this study also differed from middle-class women who retained a traditional life-style despite the expansion of opportunities. For the women who remained at home, experiences in the workplace did not prove sufficiently attractive to compete with a domestic life. Kathleen Gerson, in a study of a cohort born primarily in the postwar period and thus younger than those described in this book, identifies two stay-at-home groups. One, which she labels "the traditional model," grew up with domestic expectations and did not have a satisfying experience in any of their jobs. In intact marriages, they had sufficient financial resources to enable them to avoid paid employment. The other group, which Gerson describes as ambivalent toward mothering and domesticity, also had disappointing experiences in the workplace, where they found little opportunity. Domesticity then became a haven to which they were relieved to return. IS The twenty-two in this study differed from such women, finding reasons compelling enough to change their situation in the push from their domestic life and the pull from the workplace. But they were also born in the decade before the women in Gerson's study and were even more deeply steeped in traditional values. Before they moved away from a full-time commitment to the home, they had to resolve their feelings toward domesticity, and particularly motherhood. While each woman's first step beyond the domestic circle owed much to her particular situation, the motivations to leave can be categorized into the same groupings-Contented Housewives (Time- Outers), Contented Housewives (Long-Termers), and Discontented Housewives-that characterized their attitude toward their domestic situation during their period at home.

THE

TIME-OUTERS

The Time- Outers had the least conflict about leaving full-time domesticity. They had always thought of their time at home as limited and were able to decide on a time that they perceived as appro-

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priate. In many ways, they were the most modern of the women because they had developed a more complex and multifaceted view of female identity than had the others: They had early envisioned themselves as autonomous people and anticipated that there would be a time when they would have less intense involvement in their family roles and more in the outside world. Age and stage of last child dictated the timing for most of them, although what was considered the "appropriate" time seemed to vary from mother to mother and could be individually defined as nursery school, kindergarten, or first grade and could often be influenced by other considerations. Her children's stage was certainly operative for Dorothy, who had abandoned her goal of becoming a scientist. She entered law school on the day that her twin daughters entered first grade. Betsy, a former social worker, took up part-time work when her last child entered kindergarten. Debbie, who had delayed her graduate training to be an African historian and followed her husband to Southeast Asia, returned to the states when her second child was about to enter kindergarten. She had consciously set aside her years in Asia as the time to have her children. Now that the family was back in the United States and her second child was ready for kindergarten, she was ready to resume her schooling. The age of the child could be totally overlooked, however, if other factors were more pressing, as happened with Janet. Janet had always planned to wait until all of her four children were in school before thinking about pursuing her long-term ambition to be a nurse. But her fourth child was only one year old when she returned to school. A number of things kind of fell together. For one thing there was a new baccalaureate nursing program that opened up at the university. And so I had the possibility, for the first time, of going back and pursuing the nursing that I had put on the back burner, and doing it locally. And, very importantly, "the other really big motivator was my son," who was her fourth child. He was a marvelous baby; he really was. But he was very colicky as a little baby and very attached to his mother. He was,

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of all my children, the only one that absolutely refused to take a bottle. If I was home and had company or if I was away and left him with a baby-sitter, he would scream for hours, but he wouldn't drink out of a bottle. He wanted his mother. And as he got a little bit older, he still really wanted me to do things for him. I just felt it got to the point where it was not healthy for either of us. He needed to be exposed to some other people, and I needed to have a little more breathing room. She announced to her husband, Neil, "The time has come. I am going to look into going back to school." Janet, who had until then very much enjoyed staying at home, was undoubtedly suffering from what Leonard Pearlin calls "role disenchantment," which he notes increases with the number of children living at home. Pearlin suggests that it is sometimes not that women want to work outside the home but that they are strained by the work inside the home. 19 In Janet's case it was clearly a case both of role disenchantment and outside attraction.

THE

LONG-TERMERS

For the Long-Termers, the most traditional on the spectrum, a major shift or change in their life had to occur to move them out of fulltime domesticity. In the case of two of them, Nancy and Claudia, deteriorating marriages dictated a reassessment of their situations. Nancy, who left college because of her pregnancy, and had then married and worked to support her husband through graduate school, had welcomed the chance to stay at home with her children and to engage in a rich domestic and volunteer life. Then she found out that her husband was having an affair: "It was devastating. It shattered the childhood dream-the family always staying together." Nancy's own parents had divorced and remarried each other but had continued a stormy relationship. She had always hoped for a "Father Knows Best" household despite the turbulence in her own family of origin, and was heartbroken to find her own marriage so far from that ideal. Although she and her husband separated for only two or three weeks, the news of his affair made her reassess her

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situation and herself: "I just decided to take control and do something for me now." Realizing that her husband had grown in his career while she had not, she also became aware of her own dependency-and her own strengths. "If we are going to separate, then there wasn't going to be anybody to take care of me and all my life I'd had someone to take care of me." But, she also began to realize: I didn't need it anymore. There was really only one person that could do anything for me and that was me. I realized that I could do whatever I wanted to do by myself. The crisis made me realize that I had the inner strength and the ability to do whatever and handle whatever myself.

It took a year for the crisis to resolve itself but one of the outcomes of Nancy deciding to "take control" of her life translated into her going back to school to study to be an architect. Although she found very quickly that that was not the best choice for her and developed instead a career as a banker, that semester in school catapulted her out of the house and her long-term domesticity. A dissatisfaction with her marriage and with her life also sent Claudia searching for new avenues of expression. Claudia had spent a great deal of her life being, as she called it, "perfect." This term encompassed her many religious experiences of being saved as a child, her responsibility for her sick and dying mother when she was in junior high, and her dazzling performance as a wife and mother who cooked gourmet meals and sewed everyone's clothes. Claudia had really enjoyed domestic life. Not only did it give her time to work on her art but she also prided herself on being a creative and efficient housekeeper. Her sense of satisfaction with housework, however, was dependent on her feeling that her accomplishments were appreciated. I realized that this kind of effort did not give me enough pleasure on its own, that I had to have the accolades from the receiver, from somebody else or it wasn't worthwhile. In the case of gourmet cooking, her response to a diminishing appreciation was abrupt.

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I quit being a gourmet cook one day when I cooked this lovely meal just for my husband and me, straight from Julia Child with all of the courses. It was marvelous. And he wanted to bring a book to the table. And I said, "Why would you do that?" He said, "Well, just because you have enjoyed cooking, must I not enjoy reading my book?" And I said, "You know, there's absolutely no reason." And I quit gourmet cooking at that point. This interaction was symptomatic of a deteriorating marital situation. She began to experience a growing irritation with Eric as he took up long-distance bicycling and was virtually absent on the weekends. His doing this could also have been a reflection of trouble in the marriage. Certainly he placed his own interests over family life. At about the same time, Claudia's last child entered first grade. She did not articulate this as a motivating factor for her restlessness, but as her children became less dependent on her she seemed to experience it as a rejection of her housekeeping and mothering. She felt that "my family either cannot be or is not, appreciative enough for me to want to continue doing it." This sense of no longer being needed or appreciated contributed to her feeling that "at this point my satisfaction of having a well-run house has ended. I've done that. I'm ready to do something else. It is sort of like I have shown that I can do that well. I am no longer getting satisfaction from doing it well." She signed up for an English course at a community college with the "not verbalized" but "quiet thought" that she would finish her college degree. It was a small step but signaled to her family, and herself, that she was moving on from full-time wife and motherhood. The two other Long-Termers had a different kind of shift in their situation that, combined with some financial need, provided the stimulus to leave full-time domesticity. The talented Cynthia, who had found in marriage and motherhood a refuge from her self-doubts about her writing ability, had thrown herself into being an earth mother and a passionate antiwar activist. Although Cynthia had

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not thought about getting a job, her youngest child's entrance into kindergarten, which coincided with the end of the antiwar movement, provided a kind of signal that it was time for her to help in paying off the large debts that the family had been accumulating. Similarly Helen, perhaps the most high-powered community volunteer in the study and the wife of a wealthy businessman, was not thinking about a career when she went back to college to obtain the degree that she had wanted for so long and that parental disapproval had stopped her from obtaining. When she was offered a part-time job as the director of a community college program after she received the degree, she decided to take it, in part, because she was anticipating that in a few years her children would be in college and that there would be huge bills to pay. There was more to it than that, however. As Helen admitted: It sounded like it would be very enjoyable. It was the same thing that 1 was doing in terms of my community work only someone would be paying me. That would be neat too.

Shortly thereafter, Helen decided that she wanted a master's degree. After that, she was ready to move on and up. "I felt that if 1 had this master's now it was time for me to have that kind of a responsibility and commitment." So Helen moved on to a full-time job as a director of an adult education program. For both Cynthia and Helen, two volunteers who had devoted so much time to the community, there was a realistic need for more money. But there was also an awareness that paid work was becoming not only acceptable for women but an acknowledgment of their worth. Money was not the key factor, especially for Helen when she decided to take a full-time job that entailed more responsibility. 1 wanted money, more money than 1 was getting. It was more personal than financial. "I am worth more money in the marketplace." The desire to be tested and rewarded in the "real world," now that the women's movement had provided the support and there were

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more opportunities, was too much for these two extremely competent women to resist.

THE DISCONTENTED

HOUSEWIVES

In many ways, the Discontented Housewives stand between the more modern Time-Outers and the more traditional Long-Termers on the spectrum between the traditional and the modern. Perhaps "stuck" is a better word to explain their position. Unable to commit themselves to domesticity as a happy way of life, like the LongTermers, they could not conceive of a way out of it. Unlike the happier Time-Outers and Long-Termers, most of the Discontented Housewives were so immobilized by their depression at being home and so guilt-ridden about these feelings that the new ideas about women's opportunities could not at first infiltrate into their way of thinking about their lives. The lack of control they felt in their daily lives also made it difficult for them to take charge enough to consider changes. For many of them, the negative circumstances of their lives had to intensify and almost reach crisis proportions before they-or their husbands-took action. The crisis could take many forms and for some women seemed to be a cri de coeur to which their husbands responded. Their husbands' insistence that they take the necessary steps to move out of full-time domesticity seemed to be the critical factor in allowing them to overcome their own sense of guilt and failure. Interestingly, some of their mates, not as depressed by the situation, were able to respond to new ideas about appropriate women's behavior and react more receptively to broadening options than were their wives. 20 Marilyn, a Traditionalist, became particularly unhappy with being at home after the birth of her third child. Trying to deal with her discontent at being at home, she worked part-time in her husband Dave's new business, but she "screwed up the books royally," and soon they "were getting on each other's nerves." Marilyn was nevertheless surprised when Dave suggested that she go back to school to get a master's in counseling and "do her own thing." In the past

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he had had a traditional attitude about women's roles, not even approving of her leaving the children with baby-sitters in the early years of their marriage. But by that time "his attitudes changed with the times as he saw other women working," and her depression, the family's need for more financial resources to support the new business, and their incompatibility in the business led to his suggestion. Once she had the counseling degree, Marilyn moved on to an executive position in a social services agency. Whether Marilyn would have thought about embarking on a seriously committed career without Dave's encouragement is questionable. Although she responded to his idea immediately, her own goals had been much more limited: "I had never thought of doing that. My attitude always was I needed to do something and it wasn't that I necessarily needed to be paid. I was always looking for something different." Frances, another Traditionalist, also received encouragement from her husband, AI, a college professor. Paired with Al since high school, Frances had planned her life around that relationship and had trained to be a teacher so that she could support Al through his graduate training. After the birth of her second child, however, Frances, who had been unwilling to face the fact that she did not like being a full-time housewife and mother, had bouts of depression. Finally: Al encouraged me to go back to school and think seriously about having a career. So he was in some ways perhaps the most influential person in getting me to think about not being a housewife. His support made it possible for her to overcome her sense of guilt that she had failed to meet her obligations as a wife and mother and started her on the road to a doctorate. One of the guiltiest of the Discontented Housewives, Gail, had spent four years trying desperately to get pregnant and when her son was born discovered to her horror that she hated staying at home. Her feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction grew until the climactic time when her husband Ken went away on a three-week trip, leaving her with her three-year-old son:

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When Ken came back I was so full of resentment at having been left with this screaming three-year-old who was at an age where he knew if he wanted something, the best way to get it was to stand almost on my toes, look up at me and scream bloody murder because I couldn't stand that shrieking. I would either swat him or give him what he wanted. Her husband returned to find her distraught. That night my husband came back; he said, "You have got to do something, because you are miserable and I don't like you when you are miserable." The next day she called up the university to find out about going back to get a graduate degree in economics. As a former math teacher, she had always been fascinated by economics. Her husband's insistence that she leave full-time domesticity was the crucial spur that allowed her to overcome her deep sense of obligation and fears about leaving full-time motherhood. As she said, "I think I just needed myself to be so convinced that I could go out and act on it." Although a number of the Discontented Housewives were so deep in depression and despair that an outside intervention was required, some of them also seemed to need their husbands' "permission" before they could leave full-time domesticity. In part, this reaction was the result of wives' considering themselves socially deviant for not enjoying motherhood and domesticity. Their husbands' encouragement seemed to represent a kind of cultural acknowledgment that it was all right to consider options other than the domestic one. Moreover, their husbands seemed to be in charge, calling the shots about what was appropriate and what was not. When Dave objected to baby-sitters, Marilyn stayed home, and when he suggested she "do her own thing," she did. Such occurrences point to the persistence of elements of a patriarchal family structure that gave husbands and wives distinctive roles to play, including placing the husband at the head of the house. This, despite the fact that marriage in the twentieth century has increas-

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ingly been characterized as "companionate," implying an equality between husbands and wives. 21 Even if on a daily basis the husband did not "rule the roost," there certainly remained a residual feeling that he was in charge. Gail, for example, worried about ending full-time mothering. I thought that the one parent that my son has during the day is going to desert him. And if things go badly it is going to be my fault. And I think I worried about all those things. Ken's reaction was key because Gail thought of him as a kind of watchdog over her behavior, even as she realized that that might not be true. Ken is not a blaming person. I do not think I could ever have concluded rationally that if I did go out and work, and somehow things didn't go well-that my son got sick-that he would blame it on me because he just does not play that game. Nevertheless Ken's saying, "You have got to do something about it," and, more important, Gail's realization that he really meant it, set her free to resume her education. For other Discontented Housewives it was not their husbands' intervention but rather a worsening in the conditions of their lives that literally drove them out of the house. This deterioration in the quality of life happened to Virginia, for example, when she followed her husband, Michael, to his new job in another state. Virginia had developed a group of friends who spent a great deal of time together while their husbands worked long hours. She did look forward to the move, however, because both she and Michael thought his new job would expand their time together. Instead he worked even longer hours than before. I never saw him. I hated the place because I had left this wonderful support group. I was fifteen hundred miles away from my family where we at least had been close enough for a desperate weekend or Christmas or Thanksgiving. People in Colorado are very western, independent, so they weren't real anxious to

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make friends with you. My husband was gone all the time. I hated it. Her third and last child was in kindergarten and "to save myself from going truly mad" she signed up for one course in economics. Virginia had been a Nontraditionalist at the end of high school but had dropped out of architecture school and gotten a liberal arts degree before marrying. Going back to college was a pleasure; she loved it immediately. "There was such a charm to know that your brain had not turned to cement, and academics was the environment where I had always done well and been comfortable." Although she did not realize it, this was to be the first step in a career as a college teacher of economics. Karen, who was a nurse, also suffered when she followed her husband, Jerry, to a new job, leaving behind her close-knit group of friends and neighbors. But even the supportive network had not helped Karen overcome her rage at staying home and, once she moved, it grew. More alone and depressed than ever, with three small children and a husband gone for stretches at a time, she kept busy renovating her house. And then she dropped a board on her leg, which ended up in a cast. She could not drive, knew no neighbors, lived in a house with two stairways, and with children who, "as little kids do when they realize you can't go after them, would do things beyond my reach, beyond my crutch." Until then she had felt financially and emotionally dependent and now she was physically dependent as well. It was the "final straw." Her leg in a cast came to represent for her the hobbling of herself, of her identity. Convinced "that the pain of the isolation and dependency was greater than any pain that I would have to handle" and with a rage "that was just volcanic at that point," she went down to the basement, used a saw and cut the cast off her foot-referred to by her children as "the day mom cut her leg off." As a result, she was forced to walk on her heel for six months. At this moment of deep desperation a relative died and left her $1,000 and she, in her words, "began to make my getaway" by enrolling in a course in the women's program at the local community college.

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Sandra, like Virginia, had dropped out of architecture school, and was literally driven out of the house by her domestic situation. Her husband was involved in the family business. When her sister-in-law had a baby six weeks after Sandra had one, Sandra was told that she was expected to take care of the child to allow her sister-in-law to return to work in the family business. It was the family, the big guilt thing. The whole family worked in the business, so therefore your contribution was obviously going to be to take care of the other little one. Sandra found herself alone all day with three small children and, to make matters worse, her sister-in-law often did not pick up the baby until nine or ten at night. Sandra was a good girl- "1 was a real 'love me, love me' type" -and did not say anything. But she felt the resentment building up over two and a half years. Then came the climactic moment: It was a nightmarish experience, because 1 literally came close to killing her kid. 1 threw him against the wall. Sandra was frightened. She said, "That is it. No more of this!" This incident led Sandra to conclude that she had to find a job. "That was my way to get out of it." After several years of acceding to the family's wishes, "all of a sudden part of me says, 'Hey, we have got to look after me.' " When Sandra went back to paid work, she found jobs that involved her in engineering, which had been her real interest before she had settled for architecture school, but which had seemed an unrealistic choice for women in the 1960s. She worked for five years in a variety of low-level jobs in semiprofessional engineering work. At the end of that time she was working side-by-side with a man who had an engineering degree. Of course he was getting two to three times more than 1 was. 1 realized we were doing the same thing. And 1 was thinking, "If this yo-yo can do it, 1 am sure 1 can." So I said, "I am going back to school."

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But she was worried that at thirty-five she was too old to be successful. She was encouraged, however, by an older male engineer who, Sandra says, "was really my mentor." He told her: "You can do it." Then, still concerned, she told her advisor at the university, "Well, I'm thirty-five." He reassured her, "Oh that is nothing. I went back when I was forty-two." Such support had been sadly lacking when she had been in architecture school in 1964. This was now 1979 and she felt encouraged by "people like that saying, 'You can do these things.'" Although there was only one other woman in her class, Sandra felt that it did not matter. She found most of the professors supportive, unlike her earlier experience in architecture school. Only one professor, a visiting lecturer, made derogatory remarks about women in the class. Sandra, who fifteen years before had been cowed by the faculty, now had the confidence of her maturity and the support of a woman's movement to enlighten her about the meaning of chauvinism. She confronted the man: "One more of those and I will go and report you to the dean of students." This was one indication of how far Sandra had come. Her aspirations and her assertiveness grew as she gained confidence in her jobs. Ruth, a Nontraditionalist who had wanted to be a psychologist, was an exception to the other Discontented Housewives, motivated neither by her husband's intervention nor a worsening situation. Ruth's exit was triggered by her youngest child's entrance into first grade. During that year she shook herself out of a depression that had lasted throughout the child-rearing years. She began investigating psychology programs and took the exams for entrance to graduate school. Ruth cannot explain why it happened. She simply found that "that is the point at which I could." The changed cultural milieu certainly offered support for her decision. It was very different from her earlier experience when she had tried to follow a career instead of marrying and having children, and had been made to feel that she was very strange. Now she felt buoyed up by the new feminism. Just how important this was is illustrated by the repetitive litany in which she explains how it made her feel.

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It was not so peculiar to go to school. I was not the only one. It was not a strange thing to do anymore. It is okay now. I am not doing something that is out of step with the times. I was not fighting the tide.

Ruth's time had finally come. As the experiences of all three groups-Time- Outers, LongTermers, and Discontented Housewives-indicate, once new options became available the women in this study had to navigate between their own traditional expectations and changing gender norms. In many ways, the Time-Outers made the easiest transition between home and work worlds. They had never anticipated a permanent full-time domestic life and, although some of them may have been unclear about when they would go back to work or what they would do, they were more receptive to recognizing the moment when it was comfortable to embark on the next stage of their lives. The Long-Termers, who had either expected to pursue a domestic course, or had given little thought to the future, were not immune to the new ideas about women but, unlike the Time- Outers, they were not on the look-out for the opportune moment. It required a shift in the circumstances of their lives-a crisis in the marriage, financial need, the end of a satisfying stint of volunteering, as with Cynthia and the antiwar movement-to make them revise their thinking about themselves before taking action. Also playing a role for some, although they had never articulated it as the TimeOuters did, was their children's entrance into kindergarten or first grade, which made them realize that one phase of life was behind them. The fact that so many mothers of school-age children were returning to paid work was also helpful. The Discontented Housewives, whom one might expect would have jumped at the opportunity to leave the house, had the most difficulty in contemplating alternative roles. They felt more guilty than the others about what they perceived as their failures in motherhood. Their guilt, depression, and low self-esteem made it difficult for them to move on. It took worsening circumstances that accelerated their discomfort with their situation, sometimes accompanied

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by support or "permission" from their husbands, to get them out of the house.

MOVING

ON

The women's movement and increased opportunities in professional fields not only encouraged the women in this study to go back to work but it also galvanized them to reexamine and redirect their aspirations. Janet and Karen obtained Ph.D.s and became nursing professors instead of nurses; Ann and Gail, both high school teachers, turned to law and college teaching in economics, respectively. Others were finally able to fulfill their earlier ambitions: Ruth became a psychologist, Sandra an engineer, Jo a doctor, Claudia an artist, and Cynthia a writer. Once the women in this study decided to move out of the house they did not all jump enthusiastically and suddenly into full-time careers. For most, the move was a gradual one. They took one course or a part-time job, still retaining low aspirations or unfocused goals. For those who started out more slowly, their experience in school or in a job was the critical element in drawing them on to become dedicated careerists. Seven of the women, however, had decided on exactly what they wanted to do and moved on directly from full-time motherhood to full-time preparation for their careers. Three of them, all Nontraditionalists, continued to pursue the same career goals that they had developed in college or before. Debbie had followed her husband to Southeast Asia but had deliberately organized and perceived it as an interruption in her graduate studies and as a time to have children. She resumed her full-time pursuit of a doctorate in African history when they returned. Jo, who had dropped out of medical school, also had followed her husband to a foreign country for his work. The last year they were there, she mentally struggled about her future plans. She considered going on for a doctorate, but her husband suggested, "If you have to go back for three full years to get a doctorate, why don't you just go back to medical school and get a doctorate in something useful?" At first Jo resisted. She "cried and carried on and said, 'No.''' But "the

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next morning I woke up and said, 'You are right. That is exactly what I need to do.'" Jo realized that although she had obtained two master's degrees, she "didn't have very many useable talents." After six years away from medical school she believed that, at last, "I had the maturity to assume some of the role I had not been willing to before." It was also 1970, a time when more women were going to medical school. Although Jo says there was about the same percentage of women in her class as in her original class in 1964, change was definitely in the air and the idea of a female doctor was not as rare as it had been six years earlier. In this altered atmosphere, Jo could more comfortably take her place in a profession that was becoming more hospitable to women. Ruth also continued with her original goal of becoming a psychologist, but she had to overcome enormous obstacles. By the time she decided to go back, doctoral programs in psychology had become as difficult to get into as medical school. She also had no one to advise her and had to make her way through the process of applying without any guidance or assistance from anyone familiar with the ropes. "I went to find out what I had to do and they talked about the GRE [graduate record exam] and I said, 'GRE? What is a GRE?' I had never heard of it." She then-foolishly as she later realized-applied to only one university and did not get in. Depressed for a while, she was able to mobilize herself once again and decided to get a master's in counseling in the hopes that that would make her more competitive. This took her three years because the program was designed for teachers who could attend only part-time. At the end of that time she applied to every psychology graduate program in commuting distance of the large metropolitan area in which she lived. She was turned down by all but one. Although she had very solid GRE scores she thinks that, at thirty-five, she was being discriminated against because of age. She got into the one school, she says, "by a fluke." A new program was being established and had few applicants. It had more emphasis on physiology than she wanted, but Ruth was deter-

From Housewives to Career Women

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mined that "I was going to get a piece of paper in my hand that said I had a Ph.D. in psychology!" When she finally got the degree, it took her more than a year to find a job. She attributes this both to her age and the fact that her graduate program had not yet received accreditation by the national psychology association. Finally, after a struggle that had begun when she was a freshman in college and had continued for many years, Ruth had become a practicing psychologist!

SWITCHING

CAREERS

Ann, Dorothy, and Julia used their time at home to decide on what they wanted to do. Unlike Jo, Debbie, and Ruth who pursued or continued earlier interests, they all switched to the same new fieldlaw. Although their reasons for doing so differed, they were encouraged to do so because only in the 1970S did law become a realistic choice for large numbers of women. Women had been effectively barred from law until the 1960s through informal law school quotas and, in the case of some schools such as Harvard, which did not admit women until 1950, formal quotas. Once the schools removed barriers to women, they surged in. The number of women attending law school rose from 8 percent in 1970 to 33 percent by 1980.22 Ann, a Traditionalist, had gone as far as getting a master's degree for use in teaching math, but she had never considered that a career goal, but rather a realistic choice "in case" she needed it. She had been happy at home as one of the Contented Housewives who believed that "eventually" she would go back to work. Ann became interested in law through the example of one woman whom she knew about but never met. While still a full-time mother, with occasional part-time teaching jobs, Ann dutifully followed her husband to the East Coast and lived for five years in a small community. She was very impressed by the president of the school board, who was going to law school. This woman was a close friend of a friend of Ann's, so Ann heard a great deal about her. "What impressed me," recalls Ann, "was that she was going to become a full-fledged

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career person, with a daughter, and that she was going to extraordinary efforts to do that." This woman was the only mother Ann knew of who actually had or was contemplating a career. Although Ann never met this woman, she "had a pervasive influence on my thinking that it was possible to do." When Ann returned to her home community she continued thinking about that woman and "the fact that she was doing it made me think it was possible." Ann decided to enroll in law school also. The women's movement and the new opportunities for women in the professions had become personalized in her case into the example of one woman, whom she had never met and who had herself, in all likelihood, been similarly affected by the changing environment for women. As both a product and emblematic of the changes that were taking place, this woman represented in realistic and attainable form the notion of widened opportunity and possibility. Not a media star of the women's movement, but an ordinary person, this school board president had taken a great leap; if this average woman could do it, Ann thought, so could she. For Ann, this woman embodied the idea of female achievement and autonomy and encouraged Ann to try also. Both Dorothy and Julia turned to law only after first giving up their cherished career goals. Dorothy decided that it was not possible to resume her promising career as a scientist that had been interrupted when her twin daughters were born. She reasoned that there would be few opportunities in science for her in the western town that the family had moved to because of her daughter'S health, particularly because there was only one university, and Dorothy and her husband, Sam, had the same specialty. It would have been totally frustrating to me. I couldn't have

used my education and I couldn't consider really moving because I had a child who was improving while she was here. So I knew I was going to be here and I had to make the best of it, and that was that. While she was at home Dorothy thought realistically about what alternative career she might choose and decided on law.

From Housewives to Career Women

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1 decided there were a certain number of options available here and there were certain things that 1 could do and wanted to do. From those things 1 decided that was what 1 would do. 1 think that 1 felt it could be significant-significant in the general social sense or significant in that it would assist people in resolving problems which they consider to be very difficult.

Dorothy, whose aptitude and interests had driven her to seek a career in science in the 1960s when so few women even made the attempt and who had progressed as far as a master's degree before motherhood prevented her from going on with her doctorate, speaks with little emotion of her decision. But it is difficult not to feel regret for the compromises that someone as promising as Dorothy has had to make in relinquishing work she had looked forward to from childhood. Julia, who also eventually turned to law in 1980, was the latest of anyone in this study to give up on full-time domesticity, and she too found it necessary to make compromises about her career choice. As a Nontraditionalist, Julia had desperately wanted to become an academic. Through her long years at home, sometimes working at part-time jobs, other times working on her dissertation, she clung to her goal. During her last five years at home she followed Gordon to a think tank in California for his five-year fellowship. She attended seminars and her home became a social center for all of the visiting scholars. Most important to her, "I didn't feel as much like a wife." Somehow or other there was more fluidity and more integration of family and spouses into this unit, as people are away from home. A lot of the spouses were academic. It was like they might be serious persons but they were not the ones with positions. And because your whole family is uprooted, the social life is much more integrated with the work life. Work was real close to home so you have a lot of interaction with a lot of different people. It was easier to operate in a dilettantish fashion and some of it was kind of fun.

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But "I still had this [dissertation] hanging over me." It was only at the end of their time in California that Julia was able to face the fact that she was never going to be able to finish her dissertation and have the academic career she desired. She also realized that she was going to have to find a job. Julia felt that while her time at the think tank had been "a peculiar charmed life," it would cease when Gordon moved on to his next position. Her oldest daughter was in high school and they would soon need extra money for college. But that was not her only motivation. This was I980 and she began to feel pressure, different from the kind that had led her to marriage and motherhood, but a new kind of pressure that middle-class, educated women were experiencing. During that period of time there were not any women left sitting home. People look at you like, "What, you do nothing?" And so you start to feel more rotten and rotten about just being home. So it was more and more, because of the social changes, more and more feeling there was no point. And my kids were old enough now, I didn't need to sit around any more. And they were going to be gone and you know, you wanted to do something. Like Dorothy, she chose law very deliberately. What I was trying to think of was what could I stand to do eight hours a day where my mind would be in operation so that it would give me pleasure. I am not going to save the world, I am not going to produce great new ideas that millions of people are going to read. That had been my idea to write great ideas and others would read them and this would be wonderful. But I was not going to do that. So then the question was what could I stand to do whose activity I would enjoy. The fact that her father was a lawyer-which had little effect on her in her early years-now assumed new relevance. "That is one of your possibilities laid out before you." I could see that my father took pleasure in his work and he is a smart man. I could see that it was involving. I could see by

From Housewives to Career Women

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watching how it was with someone else that it was something else that I thought I could do and that would give me pleasure, would be sustaining. Because I felt that it was sustaining for my father, that he clearly enjoyed his work. Julia was disappointed that she could not become a college professor as she had wanted to for so long but, like Dorothy, she quite deliberately made a second-best choice that she believed could give her satisfaction.

FINDING

A

CAREER

Barbara also used her time at home to think about what she wanted to do. She had gotten a master's degree in Latin American studies before she had a child but had been unable to conceive of a way to combine a career and family. While she was at home she thought from time to time about getting a Ph.D. But she had also spent some of her time at home doing portraits of children so she also considered a career 10 art.

In some ways art seemed much riskier than going into social science. I thought that you would have to be really great to achieve something in art whereas in sociology you have to be very good. I really wanted something that could make a living. I don't know why I chose sociology. She began to think more seriously about the future when she learned that they were going to move to a new university town for Bill's next job as an assistant professor. Once they moved, she set about preparing herself for graduate training in a very deliberate way. I did a lot of reading in sociology. I didn't feel like I had much background. I gave myself a year to apply and get myself tooled up. Barbara had always had some interest in a career, not only because her beloved brother, now dead and much mourned, had advised her to have one but because she admired the drive he had demonstrated in his profession. Her brother had worked night and day as a jour-

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nalist and "it seemed like work was really important. That is how you found meaning in your life and so I always had that model." As a Time- Outer, she had retained the idea of an eventual career, but while at home she always thought, "I was going to be the exception and I was basically going to go into a male career even though there were no other women." In the meantime, however, the women's movement had happened and that had an important effect. "I started having friends who were much more conscious of feminist things." Barbara remembers particularly meeting a woman, "maybe the first woman I know who kept her own name." Like the school board president who was both a law student and mother and who had so impressed Ann, this woman who had kept her name represented a new view of womanhood that "began to kind of just trigger things" for Barbara. What changed was that I began to see other women, and I began to see a career not necessarily as a male thing, as an exception. I began to see it as something that was quite natural for a woman to do as well. The woman's consciousness kind of came for me on top of a career orientation and sort of reinforced that orientation. After her year of reading, Barbara entered graduate school in sociology, committed to a career as an academic. The seven women who made a decision about their careers and then were able to go directly into graduate training benefitted enormously from the changed atmosphere of the 1970s, which encouraged them both to persist and to raise their career objectives. They were all in a good position to take advantage of the changes. They all had earned bachelor's degrees and three of them had master's degrees, although in areas that they did not pursue. Five of the seven were Nontraditionalists at the time they married, which meant that they had already thought seriously about careers in the past, even if they had not continued to pursue them. The other two, Barbara and Ann, were Time- Outers who had seen their time at home as temporary. What had changed dramatically for these two was that Barbara

From Housewives to Career Women

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no longer felt she would be a lone female in a male-dominated workplace while Ann was able to change her aspirations from teaching to law. A

GRADUAL ApPROACH

Fifteen of the twenty-two women in this study were more tentative than those who plunged directly into the world of full-time schooling. Eight of them had bachelor's degrees and three of these had master's degrees in teaching. One of them, Karen, had a diploma from a nursing school and six others had not graduated from college. Most of those who had made any preparation for careers had focused on the traditional female occupations of nursing, teaching, and counseling, primarily to have jobs to fall back on if their families needed financial help. Only two of them, Sandra and Virginia, who had both dropped out of architecture school, had had nontraditional goals. When these fifteen women started out, they had limited goals-to take a course, to get a college degree, to earn money at a job. Once they started, a reinforcing process took place: As they moved out into the world of the 1970s, they found increased opportunities and a more supportive atmosphere. Not only did it give them a sense that it was okay to go to school or work but it also inspired them to raise the level of their aspirations. Those with no career goals developed them, and others with traditional female plans became more nontraditional. Personal confidence grew and the realization that they could go further than they had in the past served as a goad and a goal. As they found out that they could fly, they began to take off, each accomplishment encouraging them to go higher. Virginia started out by taking one course in economics to relieve the sense of isolation that she felt from a move to a new community. As a dropout from architecture school, she was also pleased to discover that the mathematics she had learned had not all been erased. At first she took one economics course a semester, and then two. But she had always been a goal-oriented person and "just taking

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courses didn't satisfy me." When the chairman of the department suggested that she might as well get a master's degree she thought, "Why not?" It took her three years to get that degree, going fulltime after the first year. This degree led to a full-time teaching job at the university for the next three years. But this job and a master's degree were no longer enough to satisfy her rising ambition. Once in academic life she began to be aware of its standards and its culture, realizing that to become a "first-class citizen," as she put it, she needed a doctorate. At first there did not seem to be any realistic way that she could leave the state to go to one with a doctorate-granting university. This sense of immobility all changed when Michael's business collapsed and made the family feel that they needed a new start. Virginia's desire to get a Ph.D. was the key factor in deciding where to move. From one course she had found a whole new career. Evelyn was another person who took the part-time route to committed work, starting as a columnist in the give-away newsletter of a local diaper service. Evelyn, one of the Discontented Housewives, was a mother of five, had limited resources, and was overwhelmed both by motherhood and by her guilt at not liking it. A friend got Evelyn her first job as a columnist for the diaper-service newsletter. This job "gave me ego satisfaction to see my name in print," in a way that being a mother did not. The minimal amount of money she earned enabled her to save enough to buy a piano-"a big accomplishment for me at the time." This gave her enough confidence to approach the local Catholic newspaper and to suggest that she write a regular column on young families. To her delight, the offer was accepted and soon she found herself something of a local celebrity. All of a sudden at parties it wasn't all talk about what my husband did. But people were beginning to notice me and say, "Oh, I read your column," and I became more and more impressed with myself. Encouraged, she asked the newspaper editor if she could do additional features and, as she went about the community interviewing

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for her articles, she asked people whether they knew about parttime jobs. By the time that her last daughter was in kindergarten she had obtained a full-fledged professional position at the local hospital and was in charge of public information and public relations. From being a columnist on a throw-away newsletter she had managed within a period of four years to develop a "real job," as she called it. She eventually moved on to become an administrator of a public relations program in a local department store. Starting gradually, with only a desire to get out of the house and with no long-term plan for a full-time commitment, Evelyn was able to take on more responsibility as she gained in skills and confidence and became a dedicated professional. Karen, a nurse, began her journey toward raising her career goals in the same way that thousands of women did through community college programs, returning women's programs at universities, and women's studies courses. 23 Karen, who in despair at her isolation and dependency as a full-time mother had chopped a cast off her leg, considered her return to school the beginning of what she termed her "getaway." She discovered during her first community college course, "Investigation into Identity," that she was angrier than most of her female classmates. In fact, she found out later that she had terrified the other women in the class. She was also different from them because she "was out to change my life, not fill a couple of hours during the day instead of going to a garden club." The class provided her "an opportunity, probably for the first time, to sit with other women and explore ideas." This led to a second course, "Women in Literature," taught by an instructor who was a dedicated feminist and thought of herself as a missionary out to help others. Karen describes this course as "bibliotherapy," using books as a means of understanding your life. The class analyzed not only the texts but also the lives of the women authors. And "then we would make connections between our own lives and the author's own life and the characters in the book." For Karen, the course was so "wonderful that I thought I'd died

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and gone to heaven." The class stayed together and each semester read different books. In time it became a support group for its members. And like so many women's groups in the 1970S there was an implicit expectation that its members were going to change their lives. For the next number of years Karen went to school almost nonstop, feeling desperately that "I needed to save my life." She obtained a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in women's studies. During that time she also had established a rape crisis center and had been a counselor. She decided that she wanted to be a psychiatric nurse and to do that planned to go back for a B.A. in nursing to supplement her nursing diploma. Instead, when the admissions officer heard about her educational record and her nursing activity, she recruited her to join the nursing doctoral program. My life was moving very quickly. I had this plan to finish my undergraduate degree in seven years part-time. And what happened in that seven years is I got a bachelor's, two master's, and a doctorate. Karen had finally managed her "getaway" from the life of full-time domesticity that she despised.

RISING

ASPIRATIONS

Although Nancy and Janet, unlike Virginia, Evelyn, and Karen, started out with full-time jobs when they left full-time domesticity, their aspirations at the beginning were modest and rose as a result of their experience and the increasing opportunities for women. Nancy went back to her former job as a bank teller because the family needed more income after her husband started a new job that was prestigious but at a reduced salary. She also wanted to develop some independence after the trauma of her husband's affair, which had threatened their marriage. She had had the same job before to support her husband, Tom, through law school. When she went back she had no thought of making it a career but, to her surprise, she found that she liked it. It made her feel good about

From Housewives to Career Women

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herself-"intelligent again." In the beginning her goal was modest, to progress no higher than about two steps above teller to operations supervisor. But she also began to think, "I could do anything I wanted, could go any place that I wanted." At her six-month review, when she mentioned that she wanted to be a supervisor, the reviewer said, "I didn't think that you wanted to do anything else. I had heard that you didn't." Stung by this assessment, Nancy for the first time articulated her ambition to a superior: "I certainly don't know where you got that idea. I would like to have a career in banking." From that time on Nancy raised her sights and began to act like a committed professional, "watching for opportunities and thinking about paths, how to get there, what to do, letting people know that I wanted to go further, taking some risks." Within three years she went from bank teller to corporate officer-a very fast ascent. Thinking back on how her thinking changed from doing a job to becoming a professional banker, Nancy says that "it just evolved. It didn't happen overnight." Each advance gave her more self-confidence and the ability to imagine herself moving further. She was also helped by the women's movement and the affirmative action laws that made banks, including hers, expand the number of positions open to women. In her work she felt supported by another product of the women's movement-the formation of professional groups that offered members help. In Nancy's case it was the local chapter of a national association of bank women. The organization provided the opportunity to develop new skills by organizing themselves into a study group and, perhaps most of all, offered the kind of support and understanding that only women in a similar situation can provide. Lots of times just being there. Just to know that you can call and if you have a problem or you're dealing with a situation, a corporate situation, you need to talk to someone so it's not going to go anyplace. Being able to put a word in, perhaps, here and there. Some cases of talking to each other just if you're

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having a bad day, you call them and "hey, you're okay." Because like many professions, banking is extremely conservative and chauvinistic. Such support made it possible for Nancy to think of rising higher in banking than she had ever anticipated. Janet also developed her aspirations from the more traditional role of staff nurse to professor at a research university. This rise in ambition corresponded in many ways with the changes that were taking place in academic nursing; at this time the doctorate was becoming more widespread for nursing faculty members.24 Janet had wanted to be a nurse from high school on but had attended a liberal arts college where nursing was not offered. When her local university established a nursing program Janet, ready to spend less time with her fourth and crankiest child, went back to college and finished her nursing credits in two and a half years. She worked as a staff nurse for the next year and a half and then was offered a job filling in at the last minute as a nursing instructor. She found that she loved teaching, but it also was clear that she did not have the proper credentials. After one year of teaching, therefore, she went back and got her master's degree and then obtained a full-time, tenure-track teaching position. Janet then decided to get her doctorate. Although she could have gotten tenure with her master's degree she, like Virginia who decided to get a doctorate in economics, was not willing to settle for less. She had a great desire to make an impact professionally on whatever my professional sphere might be. Right now there is a tremendous need to giving nursing a more solid foundation with a scientific base that is substantiated by nursing research. To obtain the education she needed, she had to leave the state. The summer before she applied to doctoral programs the family spent a month traveling around to visit prospective programs and chose the place that Janet considered the best. Her husband, Neil, who had transportable skills, was able to take a leave and get a job at the

From Housewives to Career Women

I I

7

university also, so the entire family picked up and moved for three years. Janet's decision to move from a staff nurse to a Ph.D. faculty member position was supported by the changed atmosphere that legitimized a woman's desire to have a satisfying career and allowed Janet to feel comfortable about articulating her needs and goals.

MOVING

Up

By the end of the 1970s, the lives of the women ill this study had changed dramatically. They were no longer full-time mothers. Whether involved in graduate or undergraduate school, a part-time or full-time job, they were all on their way to careers. As these accounts indicate, one of the most striking changes that occurred was the sharp rise in their level of aspiration. All of these women ended up in, or preparing for, professional careers. Yet at the time of marriage only five of them had nontraditional goals, while a few others were involved in more traditional careers. As a result of the historic changes that occurred in their adult years, those with no or low career goals developed nontraditional professional ambitions: Nurses became nursing professors and teachers became lawyers. Most became involved in careers with a seriousness of purpose and a dedication that few could have anticipated when they married. The rise in educational and occupational goals that characterized this group demonstrates how effectively the structure of opportunity interacts with the structure of aspiration for women. 25 As children, most of these women had to face the reality of limited occupational opportunities. Few of their experiences in college or the workplace had been encouraging. This lack of opportunity, combined with the pressures to conform to gender norms, acted as a rein on their dreams and ambitions. However, once the social reality of their lives changed and the structure of opportunity began to expand, their aspirations also rose. Unlike their mothers, who had also been dissatisfied with their domestic lives, these women could turn to new options that had been unavailable earlier. These increased aspirations and the forward movement of many women, including those in this study, who took advantage of the

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new openings, served in turn to push against and extend the structure of opportunity. Consequently, in a mutual and reciprocal process, increased opportunity led to rising aspirations, which led to demands for more opportunity. Sandra was unwilling to settle for a job as a quasi-engineer; Janet, Karen and Virginia wanted to become full-fledged college professors by obtaining doctoral degrees. Women's increased occupational options, therefore, owe much to the women who seized the opportunities and in doing so reinforced and broadened the structural and historical changes that were taking place. The accumulation of their many private decisions and actions modified the social environment, leading to further opportunities for themselves and other women. 26 That these women, raised with gender-specific ideas of who they were and who they could become, were able to change as new opportunities presented themselves challenges the idea, rooted in Freudian psychology, that childhood experience and socialization determine the course of adult life. Rather, it supports the work of sociologists, psychologists, and historians who have recently been exploring the continuing effect of socialization throughout the life course. Their research demonstrates, as does the experience of women in this study, that as historical and cultural events and developments occur throughout adult lives, individuals have the capacity to respond to changing circumstances with changes of their own. 27

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THE PERSISTENCE OF DOMESTICITY ---0---

The transformations that the women in this study made in their lives attest to the changes that occur over the life course and to the personal flexibility that allows adults to modify their values and behavior in response to developing historical circumstances. 1 But their experiences also raise the question of just how much change can and does take place, and how much continuity remains between earlier experiences and later ones. 2 After all, families had been formed and marital bargains struck at an earlier time. And, despite altered gender norms and continuing socialization in response to new situations, old ideas about motherhood and marriage are bound to affect current behavior. Nowhere is this tension better illustrated than in the case of housework. As the women in this study went back to paid work and school they attempted to get their families, particularly their husbands, to share domestic responsibilities. Despite their many struggles, almost all of them-like most middle-class working women in this country-ended up still responsible for cleaning, shopping, and child care. Although statistics indicate that women in general do less housework once they join the labor force, it is not because husbands take up the slack. Husbands of employed wives do more housework than those of nonemployed wives, but the amount is not extensive and tends to focus on child care. 3 Working women reduce the number of hours they devote to labor at home by doing less cooking, lowering their standards of cleanliness, and devoting less time to 119

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sleep and leisure. 4 Virginia described what happened when she went back to graduate school to get her Ph.D. in economics: The house was not as clean and there were not home-baked cookies and my daughters learned that anything that said hand wash, dry flat, press with a cool iron, was something that was never crossing our doorstep. The revolution in women's roles that propelled those in this study on to new careers did not extend significantly to housework. Although feminists might name it "shit work" and call for sharing,S and polls might show that men agree that they should take more responsibility, there is little evidence that there have been significant behavioral shifts. 6 Both men and women tend to conceptualize husbands' participation in the home as "help" that a husband gives to the (assumed) primary person responsible-the wife. As the attempts by study participants to reallocate housework demonstrate, without a widespread cultural transformation, each woman was left to deal with her own individual situation within a privatized family context-one that was infused with historic resistances to change. Their differing successes in getting assistance from husbands divides them into three groups labeled the Negotiators, the Accommodators, and the Equalizers in this book. The experiences of all the groups indicate that resistance to sharing housework is about more than making beds and doing the laundry. Rather, it involves issues of nurturance, female identity, and gender relations.

CHANGED

EXPECTATIONS

Participants in this study attempted to get some relief from household responsibilities at a point when the rhetoric of sexual equality that characterized the women's movement had made them aware of inequities in the home and encouraged them to expect more egalitarian sharing of domestic responsibilities. It had, after all, been that rhetoric that, in part, had persuaded them that they had a right to consider professional careers despite family obligations. As Ann observed ruefully, "I read books and magazines that said husbands cooked, so I asked him if he would help."

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New expectations about women's roles, embedded in the rhetoric of equality, were also bringing pressure on the patriarchal family to reform. As Janet and Larry Hunt perceptively point out, the expectations for dual-career couples today are different from that of similar couples in the post-World War II period. In the 1950S such couples were considered deviant and, during a period of intense familism, worked hard to fit in by appearing conventional. Few questioned wives' double burden; it was the price women paid for deciding to work outside the home. But the development of a more receptive social atmosphere for women's expanded role in the 1970S legitimized women's desire for household help.7 Despite this legitimization, however, resistance to change was intense. The early childhood experiences of both sexes within their families had prepared them for a traditional division of labor. Those who had employed mothers had not been able to "see" their work as real work. The women in this study had learned about domestic responsibility from their mothers; their husbands had learned to expect women to take care of them. Despite the fact that many of the study participants had disliked aspects of their mothers' lives, they had never really questioned their responsibility for housework. During study participants' own years at home the division of labor had been, for the most part, taken for granted. As Ruth remarked, "I was home full-time and it seemed the most natural thing in the world that I would do it all." Once they went out to work or school, the study participants found that their husbands retained a sense of entitlement to services within the family. Study participants might work outside the home but their husbands' higher incomes continued to confirm their role as "the providers." As such, husbands' jobs were seen as more valuable while women's employment continued to be seen as an adjunct to the housewife role. Husbands, defined as providers, were seen and could think of themselves as helpers rather than as equal sharers in domestic activities, which were not their "real" work. 8 The wives were well aware that their husbands retained a sense of entitlement in the family and that husbands experienced both attempts to modify household responsibilities and wives' moves into the workplace as a challenge to their privileges. After all, as Virginia

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noted, men were being dragged along against their wills to make some of these changes. "Why wouldn't it be against their wills?" she asks rhetorically; "I mean it was a wonderful contract" for them. As Nancy explained about her husband, "He is someone who has been taken care of by his mother all his life, then his wife." And so even though Nancy's husband claimed to be proud of her work as a banker, he considered her time at her job as an intrusion because she was no longer, Nancy says, at his beck and calU The patriarchal structure of the family characterized by husbands' sense of entitlement and the persistence of sex-linked roles, such as the provider role, offer a partial, but not sufficient, explanation of wives' continuing responsibility for the housework. It is still puzzling why this persists in the face of women's changed relationship to paid employment. Attempts to answer that question have been the focus of a massive number of studies that have tried to pinpoint the exact factors that determine distribution of housework once the wife goes back to work. lo The experiences of the women in this study indicate that part of the difficulty in shifting household responsibilities is the meaning that housework has in family life. Because domestic life reverberates with a kind of gendered emotional tone that is not so apparent in the workplace, efforts to change this can seem like an assault on family, on love, and on female and male identity. Although the family is perhaps no longer considered to be the haven from a heartless world that it was said to be in the nineteenth century, nevertheless, the middle class in the twentieth century has expected family and home to provide an emotional context for people's lives, despite the increases in divorce. ll Central to this picture of the home has been the wife's primary responsibility for such domestic activities as housework. Housework has come to represent an intermingled mixture of emotional sustenance and domestic services. Washing dishes, for example, is not usually thought of as an act of love. Yet taking care of others, through such daily routines of household life, can become laden with implications of love and nurturance. 12 DeVault's study of meals and family life, for example, found that those who are responsible

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for meals "are not only providing sustenance, but also producing family life itself." \3 Many men have come to expect and depend on women for nurturance as it is embodied in household tasks. Their demands that this continue, and resentment that it might not, lead to an entrenched resistance to change that can be formidable. Some men feel a real sense of abandonment when their wives turn their energy and attention to careers. 14 Newspapers report stories of men confused and unhappy at their wives' shift in emotional focus from them to their jobs. As one husband of a wife passionately involved in her new work situation remarked in a newspaper article, "My stress level is rising. I liked the way we were. We had negotiated a comfortable arrangement .... Now it's all in flux, and I am scared." 15 The fact that such "comfortable arrangements" were often a burden for the wife and that the husband's stress might come from a loss of power in the household does not lessen the feeling of pain and bewilderment that changes bring. Women in this study had to deal not only with their husbands' expectations but also their own struggles to overcome their internalized-and culturally mandated-expectations that, as females, they should be nurturant and selfless. 16 Allied with this caretaker responsibility is the ideology of womanly sacrifice that runs deep in our culture and that implies that women's gains come at the expense of others. The revolution in women's roles that allowed the participants in this study to pursue their own self-actualization by entering the workplace has not eradicated cultural expectations of female selflessness. There remains, as psychologist Carol Gilligan notes, "the continuing power for women of the judgment of selfishness and the morality of self-abnegation which it implies." 17 The idea persists that to be a good woman is to be a selfless one-to care for others, even at the expense of oneself. The midlife women in this study had particular difficulty in shedding the morality of selflessness. They remained caught in the opposition between what Gilligan has termed selfishness and responsibility to self, particularly in the intimate arena of the family. Although many women face these struggles, it is particularly diffi-

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cult for women, like those described in this book, who have stayed home for so many years. As Virginia said: The mental gyrations I've run through to not only justify what I am doing but try to keep everyone's needs balanced. There is all this extra baggage that you have left over that says it is really important to have fresh cookies and to wax the floor in high heels. I don't know; I am sure I'll never get rid of that completely. I may behave as though I have gotten rid of it but it is always kind of back there. The thing is that I reinforced it over eleven years. It is hard to erase those patterns. A number of women persisted in seeing their work outside the home as selfish, even if their salary quickly became a significant part of the family income. Because of this self-indictment, they felt that they could only make claims on their own behalf if they demonstrated-to themselves and to others-that they continued to perform well in that most female of areas, housework. They received little credit for assuming part of the provider role. Rather it was often viewed as costing the family in terms of loss of time and care. 18 This sense that they were taking something away from the family by working outside the home made study participants feel even more defensive and eager to prove that they were not neglecting family responsibilities. Susan, who became an administrator of a statewide education program, felt that she was only entitled to the "goodies" of a successful career as long as she took care of things at home. And even though for a time Virginia was the sole support of the family, she "had this traditional picture in my head that I was doing this for me and it was relatively selfish and so 1 shouldn't ask him to sacrifice for my selfish needs" so "I essentially did all of it." Women's role as nurturer, therefore, seems so interwoven into the fabric of the family life that attempts to change it can seem to threaten family life itself. It is in this context that the women in this study tried to make changes. Although almost all of the women remained ultimately responsible for housework, the differences in their successes in obtaining "help" from their husbands illuminate

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some of the dynamics that shaped wives' attempts at housework reallocation. The twelve Negotiators managed to persuade their husbands to give them some help. The eight Accommodators, however, faced so much resistance from their husbands that, rather than be involved in a continuous struggle with them, they simply accommodated to the situation and either did the work themselves or developed other coping strategies. The two Equalizers, on the other hand, were able to obtain a great deal of assistance from their mates and divided the amount of housework almost equally between spouses. Of particular difficulty for all of the groups was their attempt to reconcile family life and their new careers within the context of a commitment to long-term marriages. As members of stable relationships, most of the women had come to value the bonds with their husbands. Some had reached that point only after counseling, marriage encounter, or, in several cases, separation. But a part of the unspoken contract of these long-term marriages was the shared belief that wives were responsible for housework and domestic life. Negotiating changes while maintaining these relationships became one of the central tasks of this group.

THE

NEGOTIATORS

The Negotiators were able to do just that-negotiate with their husbands so that they were able to obtain a modicum of support-more than the Accommodators, who essentially gave up trying, but less than the Equalizers. For the wives in the Negotiator group, getting assistance from their husbands was often the result of a long, evolving process. Of the twelve women in this group, nine of them had been Discontented Housewives, who had persevered in their wife/ mother roles, despite deep discontent, because they believed that that was their proper role. Perhaps the fact that they had so disliked domesticity gave them the impetus to try to get some help with their household responsibilities. At first, however, it was hard to shake that feeling of responsibility. Consequently, when they first went to work or school, they became the "superwomen," popularized so fully in the women's magazines, who piled their professional

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tasks on top of the domestic ones. 19 Members in this category were determined, in fact, to show that their taking on other responsibilities would not interfere with what they continued to see as their central role. Typical was Marilyn whose husband had encouraged her to go back to school for a master's degree in counseling and who then went on to a high-level administrative job in a social-service agency. Although she was working sometimes fifty to sixty hours a week, "My husband expected me to still be there." Marilyn shared that sentiment also: "I didn't know any better. That is what I was supposed to do." For a while I was a supermom who did everything, took care of making sure that the house was clean and doing all the meals. I mean I would be shopping at midnight or 6 :00 A.M. in the morning. And in fact they gave me a sign that said "Supermom works here" and I was so proud of it I put it on the refrigerator. But then Marilyn began to feel that "it wasn't a challenge anymore; it was a drag." Somewhere between taking some classes, going to a seminar, reading, getting tired and getting some physical symptoms of stress, I decided that I did not want to be a supermom anymore and something was going to have to give. Marilyn let her family know how she felt. "I started rebelling and being unhappy with things and started asking for help." She was surprised that "when I asked for it, I got it. I just had never asked for it, never expected to get it." Marilyn had hired a once-a-week cleaning woman, but she needed her children and her husband to help out on a daily basis. What she wanted was fairly modest, but she also wanted to ask without being made to feel that she was shirking her responsibility. She asked for "some relief with the dishes or with making of the meals-bringing in more, going out to eat more" and, perhaps most important, "not feeling guilty about it." Her husband resisted on the issue of dinner, but she persevered:

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7

My husband does not like to go out to eat and I would not suggest it because of that. But slowly but surely I would just say "Hey, you know, I cannot cook tonight" and those types of things. Marilyn feels that she really had to work on her husband to get him to change and feels that she has been successful in doing so. I had a lot of changing of attitudes to do with him. I did a very good job because his brother, who is five years younger, still does some of these types of things that I just would not put up with. My husband is a compulsively clean person where everything has to be just right and I am not. For a long time he made me feel real guilty because everything just was not in its place. It has taken me many years to get to the point where I am saying, "You want it clean, clean it. I don't see it. If it bothers you, fix it." But I think he has mellowed a lot. Marilyn feels that she got the confidence to ask for more help, in part, because she was bringing in some financial resources. Her contribution made her feel that she had "paid my dues" and it gave her "a little more control than I would have had otherwise." Marilyn's self-esteem also increased as the result of a series of self-help seminars that both she and her husband attended. Typical of the new therapies of the human potential movement that sprung up during the 1970s, they stressed self-realization and made it almost a moral duty to pay attention to one's needs and desires. 20 For Marilyn and her husband, "it built up our self-esteem and gave us a lot of selfconfidence. " Marilyn had gone from a guilt-ridden supermom to someone who was willing to speak up for herself. Increased self-confidence gave her the will to persist. Over a long period of time and under constant pressure from her, her husband, Dave, also changed. Marilyn was still primarily responsible for many of the major domains of domestic life-the shopping and the child care-and received assistance in others. But it was an improvement over what she had been doing. Ruth and her husband, Arnold, underwent similar changes. When

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Ruth first started back to school for her master's degree she determined that "probably more than anything, due to my own guilt, I was going to be a supermom." Later, when she was studying for her doctorate in psychology, her children were older and could reasonably have been expected to help. I kept reading these articles. By this point there were all these wonderful articles being published about these women who had gone back to work and their children were doing everything. And all these magazine mothers have these children who are doing these miraculous things and everybody is proud of them and loving it. But Ruth was reluctant to press her own children. I still had all of my ambivalence about asking them to help with the housework. And by the time I decided I was an idiot, and should have done this long ago, it was kind of late because there was built-in resistance. And I still had my ambivalence and guilt. They never really did help much around the house. I still was responsible for all the housework. At the same time Ruth was not receiving any help from her husband. He was very supportive of my efforts. But he still was not doing the housework, or the shopping, or the laundry, or the dinner. She continued to do it all, but she grew increasingly angry. I had to be supermom and super-everything. And what would happen is instead of picking any sensible kind of course, I would do everything. And it would build and build and build, you know, the anger and resentment. And then, of course, I would explode over something. And start this terrible reign of terror and then feel very guilty and say, "Oh my God. I am just like my mother. Nobody will be able to stand me," and start all over agam. Finally, by the time she had finished her postdoctoral internship, she told her husband that she would no longer do the housework

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alone. "By the end of that year I realized I no longer could keep doing this forevermore. And he agreed." When she got a full-time job as a psychologist, they rearranged things. It was easier because both her daughters were away at college. We do split the housework, and pretty evenly. I probably do a little more than half. I still do all the cooking. I do all the laundry and I do the grocery shopping. Her husband, Arnold, who does a lot of the cleaning, is amenable to the arrangements. "He feels very much that, yes, I am working full-time and he is working full-time and that it is only fair." However when her daughters come home, "there are a tremendous number of demands." I am expected to prepare the meals. I have one daughter who is a vegetarian. I am preparing these meals that have a lot more courses than when they are not at home. All of a sudden I am trying to make meals so that everybody will have something to eat. Although her daughters both cook regularly when they are not at home, "they come home and they do not do the cooking or help with it. My older one will now sometimes put in a load of laundry for herself. Mostly they expect me to, still. They revert back and I let them." Ruth is not sure why she allows this. Probably some of the need to be supermom. Probably some of the feeling that unless you do it all along, to suddenly change in the middle of the stream requires more effort than is worth it. Part of it is that I do not want to be like my mother, and react so strongly against it that I sometimes go to another extreme. Ruth had managed to negotiate changes with her husband, but at a time when the workload had become lightened because their daughters were no longer at home. A number of women report that sharing household duties became less of an issue after the children left home and some notice, in amazement, that their own fathers now also do some domestic work around the house.

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For some of the women in this study with older children, the children leaving the house signaled the resumption of the sharing that went on when they were first married and both husband and wife were working. 21 As Ruth said, recalling those days, "I did the cooking. But we did the grocery shopping together. We did the housework together, and it lasted until the babies were born." Ruth used that as a model when enlisting her husband's help by telling him, "We are going back to sharing the housework." Ruth was less successful in shedding her sense of responsibility to her daughters who, perhaps luckily for Ruth, were not around enough to evoke her old supermom persona on a regular basis. While Ruth used neither hired help nor her children for assistance, these were strategies used by a number of the other women in the study. Approximately half of them hired cleaning women to some extent, most often once a week-an option possible because of their middle-class financial position. They also managed, with varying degrees of success, to enlist children. Betsy's teenage daughter virtually took over responsibility for shopping and cooking family meals. Others, like Virginia, found the constant nagging required to get anything done not worth the bother. Susan, an educational administrator, was one of the most successful in organizing her children. But when she first went back to work part-time as an English teacher she still did all the "mommy stuff," as she called it. Susan felt that working was a selfish pleasure and that she should not ask for help. So she continued to be, in her words, "a super home administrator." I mean no kid ever missed a dentist appointment, every carpool got set up on time. I took total responsibility for the kids, making certain they had their lunch money, that the lunch menu was cut out of the newspaper and posted. But gradually she began to introduce her three sons to housework. When they hit seven they went in the dish rotation every night so the three of them each did the dishes each night. They also every week had to clean their own rooms, and then there were three other parts, the living room, the halls, and the rec room and they rotated each week.

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In contrast to the custom of some other families, the boys responded well. "They accepted it in that there was no way out. This was what you did here." Susan was determined to have them learn to take care of themselves. There was something in me that wanted these boys to participate because if not, I had to do it all myself because I had no daughters. So by the time they got into high school they could live on their own. They often had to sew and had to iron and I felt good about that. So did they. And it was more a taking care of me than it was a conscious effort that they would not be sexist. It was I did not want to do it all. When Susan was offered her first administrative job she came home and said to Frank, her husband, I will take this job if you will clean all three bathrooms. Somehow that was the ultimate. You just did not ask a man to clean the toilets. Frank agreed, not only because he very much wanted her to take the job, but because helping out was something he had always done for his mother. In fact, he had already been doing the kitchen floor and the windows, two jobs that Susan was not enthusiastic about tackling. Despite Frank's assistance, which appeared to be considerable, Susan realized its limits. As was true in most of the households in this study, she, as the wife, was the one in charge, responsible for making sure that everything worked. This irritated her, particularly during the time she calls the "angry years" when the women's movement was making her aware of these things. I was angry at all of them and I was trying to tell them about all the things they took for granted that I did that none of them did. They all expected toilet paper to be in the linen closet, and it always was. They always expected toothpaste and shampoo to be stocked up. They knew where the stamps were. But I made a seven page list once, lined, both sides of all the things that I was in charge of in that house.

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Over the years, her husband Frank changed in subtle but important ways that went beyond doing the bathrooms. As Susan says, "His consciousness has been raised," and he no longer expected that Susan would be in charge of all of his needs. There was a time I always took in the dry cleaning. He does not expect that kind of thing at all anymore. He will ask me to do him a favor occasionally, which is entirely different. He does the laundry at least as often as I do. The changes in the care of his shirts chart the progress of Susan's and Frank's interaction over domesticity. I ironed his shirts way back. Then I bought only permanent press shirts and always got his shirts out of the dryer on time. A few years ago he wanted a shirt ironed. I do not think he had ever picked up an iron. He irons his shirts every single week now. He likes them ironed. The process reached a new dimension not long ago when, Susan says, "he was downstairs and I said, 'Would you iron my blouse?' That was the first time I asked him to iron something of mine. It was funny; we both chuckled." In Susan's case, improvements occurred slowly over time; in the case of many others, change was more cyclical. For example, when Frances first became a college professor, she tried to handle family and career alone-another superwoman. Finally, while both she and her professor husband Al were on sabbatical, she asked for more help. Al said, "Well, I'll do it but the kids have to do it too." Not surprisingly, he saw it as her job to train the children and warned, "If the kids don't do it right, you'll have to make them do it over again and it will be a lot more work than doing it yourself at first." She did manage to get her children and husband to help with the housework and the cooking, and this continued when they returned to their home university. Nevertheless, several years ago, and with the children no longer at home, Frances realized that, once again, she was doing much more than her share. This awareness emerged in the context of Frances's own emerging sense of herself as a professional. For a long time she

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had considered AI's career the primary one; only in recent years had she taken her own work seriously. Therefore she found it particularly irritating that Al was spending time, while she was cooking and cleaning, not in professional activities, such as writing books and articles, but rather in playing tennis and other recreation. So "I just said that I thought he should be doing more of his share because I had just as many demands professionally as he did, and he reluctantly agreed." Frances had changed a great deal from the young woman who had not thought about her own interests in college but had instead planned her life around AI's career. The wives in the Negotiators group were able to use their new confidence in the workplace to revise partially the ideology of sacrificial womanhood that so many of them had unhappily played out in their years at home. Evelyn, the agency administrator, found, as did others, that "as my confidence grew in what I was doing outside the home, I was able to be more assertive in asking" for help. Self-esteem and achievement in the public arena led to a greater sense of entitlement in the domestic one. While the initial response of many of those in the Negotiators' group had been to become overachieving supermoms, eventually their new sense of self-worth, their paychecks, or their sheer exhaustion made them more assertive and enabled them to press for changes in the division of housework.

THE

ACCOMMODATORS

The wives in the Accommodators group perceived their husbands as more resistant to giving assistance than the Negotiators found their husbands. When they attempted to get help with the housework in the same way that those in the Negotiators group did, the husbands continually refused to cooperate. So these women accommodated themselves to their husbands' resistance by giving up and doing most of the work themselves, by hiring help, or, sometimes, by using indirect strategies or tricks. While the women in the Negotiators group managed to utilize new financial and psychological resources to make changes in their domestic lives, the eight wives in the Accommodators group tried but failed. The Accommodators brought as much money into the family as did the first group and felt the

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same sense of new self-confidence. But they found that these resources had little influence on their husbands, whom they perceived as intransigent and unwilling to change. When Ann went back to law school both she and Vic saw it as her responsibility to organize the household and the children. Ann was concerned about arranging things and having it all under control. The first year it did not work out well. I hired a girl who was a senior high school girl to come over and clean, babysit, and make sure the kids got to their various activities. It turned out that she could do two or three of those things but not all of them. Vic proved supportive that first year which, Ann says, is the hardest year, and made himself available to help out with the children because "he wanted it to work." One important area where Vic refused to change, however, was dinner. He expected a hot meal every evening. Ann, frantic and tired, first from law school and later from her practice, tried to get him to help with the cooking. But she found that he absolutely refused: "He doesn't like to do it and he didn't do it." Ann did not seem to be angry about this, merely realistic: "I couldn't negotiate with him on those issues. He knew what he expected. It wasn't a situation that was negotiable with him, in my perception." Ann did not like to cook either. But, like Vic, she seemed to agree that it was her responsibility. "It was a traditional role; my mother came home every day from work and fixed dinner." Finally, after many years of doing the cooking herself, Ann devised what she calls a "cop-out." She hired a student to come in and cook dinner every night. The very word "cop-out" implies that Ann feels that she is still evading her responsibility. Nevertheless, Ann gratefully reports that getting a student cook "has been the single most important thing in my life, I guarantee you, because I cannot come home and cook after working all day." Even though Ann was unable to negotiate on cooking, she was able to modify her husband's behavior with the laundry. But she did not confront him directly.

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What I did is I did not do things right for him. When I did not do them right, I suggested at appropriate times that he could try and do those things himself if he did not like the way I did them, like washing colored clothes with whites. Her husband, Vic, a particularly fussy man, felt everything should be "done just right." When Ann continued to do things wrong, he eventually started doing some of the laundry. Ann also hired a cleaning woman so that she would no longer have to do the cleaning alone. At some level Ann felt, like her husband, that she should be responsible for the housework. But when the load became overwhelming, Ann did try to get some help directly, at least with the cooking. But assessing her husband's intractability, Ann developed a series of strategies that avoided direct confrontation with Vic. The first was hiring help. When it became impossible for her to work and have dinner on the table every night, she hired a cook. Then she hired a cleaning woman to help with the housework. Next Ann arranged for the family to move from a suburban area into town so that the children could get around on their bikes and not be dependent on her for transportation. And finally, she made "mistakes" -turning her husbands shirts pink by not separating the laundry-thus tricking this fussy man into assuming some responsibility for his clothes. Ann's approach of nonconfrontation was similar to other women in the Accommodator group. They did not confront their husbands on a continuing basis, like the Negotiators did, because they either tried it and found, like Ann, that it was "nonnegotiable" or because they were persuaded that their husbands would not cooperate. Debbie, an assistant professor of African history, was more confrontive than Ann but she also realized that housework was nonnegotiable with her husband Jeff. He has always been intellectually very supportive about my career but physically, putting in the necessary labor to make it all work, has been harder. Debbie gets angry about this:

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The actual arguments and conflicts that Jeff and I have, have to do with the physical kinds of responsibilities about the house and the fact that I just get so overextended that I just finally will freak out when I am real tired. And it usually happens when we are trying to do something extra, if we are having a party, or it is some extra thing added above the day-to-day thing. And then I become very resentful, and start yelling and screaming. Debbie does not feel that she should be the one responsible for the housework, but she has made a calculation about the strains that asking for help puts on the marriage. I think my husband should have some responsibility. But on the other hand, I am pretty aware of how much he is going to do, and if I want the other things that I get from the relationship I am going to have to put up with that. That is all there is to it. It is just a resignation. Debbie was willing to do the extra work in the household in order to maintain a harmonious relationship. Virginia, when she went back to get a graduate degree in economics, followed a similar pattern but confronted her husband even less. Calling herself a "conflict avoider," Virginia said she tried to reorganize the division of labor in the house "but it never took."

It was just too difficult to just keep beating at it and beating at it and forcing it every day and having everybody cranky with me all the time when everybody had been cranky with me at graduate school all day. I just took the line of least resistance, I think. I just thought, "Do it." Particularly when I was already cross because I was doing it. That makes me more efficient and I just would be mad and bash pots and pans. But she is also aware that she cannot blame her husband alone for her sense of domestic responsibility: "I do not want to push it off on him, that he trained me this way." She is well aware of the persistence of her early socialization, saying that "somewhere along the line this got instilled in me. I absorbed it so that I don't know if I will ever get rid of it." She was now in a commuting relationship and when her

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husband came to visit, "I felt in myself that 1 had to get home and cook him dinner. 1 felt 1 had to clean before he came." That sense of responsibility combined with an uncooperative husband made it difficult for her to get much help from him. Jo faced a similar problem. Both she and her husband are doctors, yet she remains frustrated by the assumption that the household work is hers and that neither her husband nor children consider it their responsibility. 1 like cooking but 1 get angry when 1 come home and George is sitting reading the paper and my daughter is in her bedroom studying, and it is a quarter to six! And they have been home for hours. And 1 am not the only one who knows how to cook. It is not my job. 1 work just as hard as they do, if not harder. And 1 should not have to do that every night. She has been so angry that "there are times when 1 have gotten to the point of calculating how many hours a week my husband works on his medicine job and doing other things, and how many hours 1 work." The last time that she did that she found out that she was spending twenty hours more a week than her husband on all of her work-inside and outside of the house-than his total number of hours. "And then 1 got really pissed about it." But she never told her husband about the differential or how enraged she was. Like Virginia: 1 get tired of nagging. And that is the hardest decision for me, when to nag and when to do it myself. And 1 often end up choosing not to nag somebody else into doing it but just do it. But then 1 get mad. 1 get mad either way. She hollers at her children but only rarely at her husband. "We talk a lot of times but it is a little bit roundabout." Jo does not believe that her husband has a deliberate policy of leaving the housework to her. 1 really think it just happens that way because we fall into traditional roles. And 1 do not think that he feels that it should be that way. 1 think a lot of it is still habit for him.

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Jo got angry, Jo got "pissed," but she was not willing to confront her husband or even to blame him. Like the other Accommodators, she felt that it might damage the relationship and she was not willing to take such risks. Claudia, an artist, found a way, unlike the others, to avoid confrontation but also to avoid doing the domestic work. When she went back to school, she wanted some help. But, as she says, "the doctor does not help." When the doctor does help, the doctor manages to make such a god-awful mess of it that you can hardly wait for him to not help. She notes, "For someone who is a capable person this has to be premeditated," although she does "give him the credit of saying it is subconscious." The kind of child care Eric was willing to do summarizes in many ways the experiences of others in the study: "He loved them and wanted to play with them." But "he wouldn't help with the children in the sense of it being an obligation. And he would not help on a regular basis." For that reason, Eric chose when he would be involved with the children, and Claudia could not count on him to share the responsibility when she needed him. When they moved to the town where they now live they developed a unique solution for child care. Their children, young teenagers, go to boarding school. That seriously cuts down on Claudia's domestic responsibilities. Once a gourmet cook, she has hardly cooked at all since her second child left home. Up until then I was doing all of the cooking. And shortly after she left, my husband came home and asked, "What is for dinner?" and I told him and he said, "Oh I do not feel like eating that tonight." And I said, "Fine." And so if he wants to eat what he wants to eat, then he can fix it. So now, "we eat out most of the time or he will cook spaghetti." Claudia's husband, Eric, wanted her to behave like a proper housewife. He wanted "exactly what he wanted and conferring about what would you like to eat, and fixing it, and being the fussy

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housewife." None of this was ever discussed-"this is all unspoken." Claudia has not tried to negotiate help from Eric. She has simply opted out, managing to eliminate most of her domestic responsibilities, leaving herself free to work on her art. Were the husbands in the Accommodator group tougher to deal with than those in the Negotiators?22 Certainly the wives in the Accommodator group perceived their husbands as intransigent, and this influenced their attempts to effect change.23 The wives had a choice: to persist in their efforts to try to obtain help or to simply do it themselves-laced with intermittent explosions when they became particularly frustrated and angry. Although almost all of the women in the study admit to being driven to tactics such as nagging and hollering at one time or another, those in the Accommodator group are notable for suppressing their anger at housework inequities. The wives' willingness to give way in the face of their husbands' resistance indicates the responsibility that women continue to feel for the emotional aspects of family life, such as keeping family relationships on an even keel. Because the wives in this group believed that to push their husbands would threaten the even tenor of their marriage or disrupt the family in some way, they were unwilling to argue about housework. Perhaps these women were less assertive than those who received more help, but confronted with more resistant husbands than the Negotiators and faced with the prospect of continual bickering and confrontation, they often made the decision that it was simply not worth the struggle. As women, they were accustomed-and expected-to do the emotional maintenance work in the family, particularly in the face of difficulty, and even when they went out to work they continued to assume that responsibility. The contrast between the Negotiators, who were successful in negotiating more assistance, and the Accommodators, who were not, demonstrates how significant the dynamics of the marital interaction and the behavior of those inside the home can be when there are few supports for domestic change in the world outside the home. The wives' belief that it was their responsibility to maintain the relationship placed them in a weak bargaining position vis-a-vis re-

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sistant husbands. They could nag and live with continual unpleasantness or they could divorce. Divorce is not necessarily the best alternative either. Recent studies provide mixed results on the effect of women's employment on divorce. 24 While employment can provide women with the financial confidence to divorce, wives' lower salaries and the economic hardship that divorced women sometimes endure can make it problematic. Divorce, in any case, did not seem to be an option for the women in this study who were interested in maintaining their marriages. This gave them less room for maneuvering than if they were willing to risk the destruction of the relationship. In such a situation, a husband's refusal to help can be a decisive factor in preventing an equitable distribution of household tasks. 25

THE

EQUALIZERS

Only in the Equalizers group did wives and husbands begin to share housework rather than having the husband "help out." In contrast to the other two groups, the Equalizers' pattern seems a model of almost-egalitarian family life. Not surprisingly, given the difficulties of modifying domestic roles, only two of the couples fit in this category! Couples in the Equalizers group arrived at household arrangements through a process in which the needs of neither partner were dominant but rather where each spouse seemed to identify with the well-being of the other. Janet, for example, observed that in her marriage with Neil each put the welfare of the other ahead of his or her own. Their housekeeping arrangements confirm this. As a Contented Housewife who was a Time-Outer Janet had been pleased to stay at home and be responsible for the domestic arrangements. When she went back to school in the early 1970S to get the first of her degrees in nursing, "I was still kind of automatically accepting that was my responsibility, my role." But, despite her attitude, this family approached household arrangements in a nontraditional way. Their one-year-old child spent half a day in a nursery and the rest of the day in a playpen her professor-husband set up in his office.

The Persistence of Domesticity

Although it might be true, as Janet says, that academics are more tolerant of divergent life-styles than other professionals and that this arrangement was made easier by Neil's flexible schedule, it nevertheless was unusual then, and even now. Yet these arrangements were carried out with a minimum of fuss and with no complaints or apparent resentments on Neil's side. The approach of Janet and Neil was pragmatic and not ideological. Usually, I am far more traditional and follow the more expected patterns. I don't ordinarily think of myself as deviating from those patterns very often or very publicly in order to make a statement about something. But I just didn't much care about whether it was traditional or not. It worked out and met our needs at the time. In fact, she traces her husband's and son's "marvelous relationship" to that experience and says that they have been close ever since. This same commonsense approach dictated other modifications of household responsibilities. At the point when she started going to school full-time for her master's degree in nursing, Janet and Neil actually sat down and calculated that "these are the numbers of hours per week that we both have, and this is what has got to go." Unlike the other two groups, the Negotiators and the Accommodators, where the wife was the initiator, it was her husband, whom she terms "more of a realist than I am, who was the first to identify the fact that he should take over some of the things that I had considered traditionally my job." They made a plan that they continued to modify as they went along-in the beginning she did the laundry and cooking and he did the vacuuming, the floor washing, and the general cleaning. In the last three years Neil has taken over almost all of the grocery shopping and a fair amount of the meal preparation while Janet continues to do the meal planning. Helen and John also arrived at household arrangements in a mutually acceptable way. Although Helen was a Long-Termer who enjoyed being at home, her husband, a successful, independent businessman was always "a rare bird" among their friends in terms of his involvement with the family. He participated fully in child rearing-

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bathing, feeding, and changing diapers-acting out, Helen thinks, what he would have liked from his own father, an alcoholic, in terms of companionship. Even when Helen was a full-time housewife all the children in the family were encouraged by both Helen and her husband John to participate in the household. From the time the children could reach a counter by standing on a chair, they helped with cooking. Helen and her husband both rejected the attitude "where it's just the wife that's always [saying] 'Can you help me? Can you help me?'" Instead, she felt that "they're not helping me, they're helping themselves, and we're helping each other so that it doesn't become 'Well this is your job' and 'I'm doing this for you.' " What is more, none of the activities were sex-stereotyped: Everybody does everything. We all cook; we all wash clothes; we all iron. My husband sews buttons because I can't stand it. He sews everybody's buttons. My son irons shirts beautifully." When she went back to school to get the bachelor's degree that she had always wanted, Helen and John really organized the house in earnest-it became "serious delegated business." Unlike other families, where such arrangements deteriorated into nagging and constant carping, Helen's children "responded very well." The consistent attitude and example that both parents provided made it clear that "this is the way we do it, this is the way it runs," even though the children recognized that this is not how it is done in every household. John made a deliberate decision to restrict the growth of his business so that he could give more time to the family while Helen was at school. We made a lot of choices. And part of the choice is that we had to restrict his business, that it could not be all-absorbing to him, that he would have less income because he would spend less time in it, that he would be devoting time to the family as well. And that is really a choice. John made the family choice which enabled me to have the time because the two would not have worked together.

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Why were the Equalizer couples able to identify so with each other's goals and desires and do the necessary work to enable each partner to flourish? The explanation seems to come from an interplay between structural factors on the one hand and personality and character on the other. If Janet's husband, Neil, had worked in a bank or in a corporation, for example, he would not have been able to have the baby in the office, no matter what his good intentions were. John, Helen's husband, was an independent businessman who could set his own hours. Yet there are similar men in this study, academics, for example, who did not choose to use their time this way. The behavior of both the men and women in the Equalizers group indicates that they were not slavishly driven by traditional values. They seemed to be, in David Riesman's term, inner-directed-able to determine for themselves the best way to proceed. 26 As Helen said, her husband was "a rare bird" among their friends, always different from the other people they knew, willing, from the beginning, to assume a large part of the housework and child care. Neil, Janet's husband, was willing to do the unconventional by having a baby in his office half a day before the idea of a nurturing father had ever appeared in the media. Janet believes that in contrast to other men "my husband is different because I think he has a lot of family influence in his professional life, too." Both these men were unusual in their dedication to family life. As couples, neither cared that they were different from others they knew. Janet and Neil looked for a solution that "met our needs." The example of how others were handling their lives also served as countermodels. Helen and John lived in a wealthy suburban area. We looked around at what was around us. And because many of our friends and neighbors were maybe ten years older than us we could see what those choices had resulted in. We did not want that. You had wives that were starting to drink at noon at the club. Their kids were all over the wall. And we just did not want it. Helen and John made the conscious decision not to have that kind of life-style. Differences in upbringing and experiences in parents'

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homes could also influence marital interactions, as the case of Helen and John illustrates. Helen was determined, from an early age, not to be like her mother. I grew up in a household that was martyrdom. My mother did everything. I mean my mother dresses my father. She puts his clothes out on the bed before they go out and he gets dressed. From the time I was eleven years old I started writing a journal, a diary kind of, notes and things about the things that would be different and one of the things that was going to be different was I wasn't going to be a martyr in my house, running and scurrying for everyone in the house. And my marriage hasn't been that way. As it turned out, she found in her husband a willing and cooperative partner. John's mother, Helen says confidentially, was "a slob." She was always doing arts and crafts and John claimed that as a boy "he never saw his dining room table" because his mother had paper flowers on it for years at a time. When John and Helen were going out together and invited friends to his house the two of them would first straighten the place out, vacuuming, doing the dishes, getting things in order. As a result of the chaos of his youth, John was determined to have a neat house and Helen has "never had to pick up after him in our entire married life." Individual differences among participants in this study also are evident in the Equalizer couples' willingness to consider the needs of a partner equally, or ahead, of their own, characteristics that psychologist Rollo May has suggested as essential elements of mature love.27 The contrast between the attitudes and actions of the men in this group with someone like AI, Frances's husband, whose approach to sharing household work was self-serving, is quite startling. When Frances insisted that AI, whose lapse from cooperation was discussed earlier, should do more of the household chores, he agreed but was reluctant because, as Frances says, simply, "he would prefer not to have to do them." Instead, he "is very acknowledging of the fact that I do more than my share. And he thinks it is wonderful and

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he praises me for it." Al is not simply a prisoner of sex-stereotyped ideas about men and women's roles, although these traditional ideas might have influenced his attitude. Rather, according to Frances, "he feels that whatever you can get away with is fine." Frances explains matter-of-factly: "It is part of the times, you see-enlightened self-interest." AI's willingness to look out only for his interests and ignore the resultant extra burdens on his wife, while perhaps an extreme example, underscores how differences in personality and character, when added to the persistence of historical and cultural permission given to men to leave housework to women, can affect the marital division of labor. The evidence in this study indicates that the complexities of intimate relationships make it difficult to make decisions about sharing domestic work on a totally rational basis. This evidence serves as a critique of exchange theory, one of the most widely used explanations for housework allocation. Exchange theory looks at what resources-time, salary, love-each partner brings to the household and analyzes how partners weigh these resources against each other in determining housework distribution. Originally assuming a stayat-home wife and a working husband, the theory concluded that husband's paid work meant that he had more bargaining power than a wife and therefore could avoid domestic work. Exchange theory predicted that as wives increasingly joined the work force, thus bringing other resources to the exchange, husbands would begin to increase their housework participation.28 But as this study and others have shown, a change in the division of domestic work does not necessarily happen. Exchange theory is not a satisfactory explanation because it depends too heavily on a model of rational decision making. By relying on the language and assumptions of economics for discussing family relations, exchange theory presumes that added resources translate into family changes. As the contrasting experiences of the Negotiator and Accommodator groups demonstrate, however, the mere accumulation of more resources did not necessarily lead to change. The Negotiator group seems to conform closest to exchange theory because ultimately the increased resources that wives brought to family life appeared to

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result in at least a minimal redistribution of household tasks. But the fact that no such reallocation happened in the Accommodators' group, where wives also garnered similar resources, indicates that factors other than increased resources were responsible. In both the Negotiators and Accommodators groups, the interaction between husbands and wives was crucial; the wives pushed and the husbands either gave way, as in the case of the Negotiators' husbands, or did not, as in the case of the Accommodators' husbands. The examples in this study underscore another difficulty of exchange theory-it describes men's behavior more than it does women's. Study participants were not willing to use their resources to press for help with housework if they believed that this might jeopardize the even tenor of their marriages. Wives' sense of responsibility for sustaining relationships, therefore, inevitably makes them noncompetitive players in the exchange game. 29

GENDER AND

DOMESTICITY

As the experience of the women in this study indicates, gender and housework remain inextricably enmeshed. The historical equation of nurturance and housework makes it difficult to separate women, traditionally held responsible for nurturance, from housework. In the Accommodator group, the gendered responsibility for maintaining household equanimity meant that wives were reluctant to push their husbands if they perceived it as threatening to the relationship. Only in the Negotiator group and, more extensively in the Equalizer group, where husbands responded more positively, were wives able to modify their domestic responsibility. In all the groups, though much less among the Equalizers, wives retained ultimate responsibility for domesticity. The persistent connection between gender and domesticity becomes clear in two studies of successful career women, those who would seem to be on the cutting edge of new patterns. In Rosanna Hertz's study of dual-career couples in the corporate world, husbands and wives are almost equal in salary and career status, but it is the wife who assumes responsibility for care once children arrive.

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Although the wives do not stay home and instead hire help, they are in charge of making those arrangements and picking up the slack when sickness or other unforeseen events occur. They are also the ones who pull back on their careers in order to devote more time to their families while their husbands charge up the corporate ladder unencumbered. 30 Aasta S. Lubin's study of successful career women in high echelon positions echoes this finding: "The daily running of the household is almost exclusively in the women's hands."3! Even though the women in both studies command considerable financial resources, and therefore, according to exchange theorists should be in a better position to bargain for help, gender remains the key factor in determining household responsibility.32 Sarah Fenstermaker Berk argues, in fact, that the house and housework comprise a "gender factory" that produces not only commodities like meals and clean children but also, symbolically, gender relations. When couples do housework they also "do gender," living up to and conforming to an image of gender behavior that incorporates long-established and normative patterns. By conforming to these old patterns, they at the same time ratify and reify traditional ideas of gender. Part of the difficulty in changing patterns of housework, therefore, comes from its threat to accustomed ways of expressing gender and relationships between genders. 33 There is little incentive for men to change because it undercuts their privileged status and life-style but also because, accustomed to equating their wive's domesticity with affection, they perceive attempts at reallocation of housework as an emotional rejection. For women, there have not yet emerged clear cultural and ideological definitions of female identity that do not include women's special responsibility for nurturance and, consequently, domesticity. Until there is a societal consensus on a definition of womanhood that does not equate domesticity and nurturance and does not consider them quintessential female qualities, it will be difficult to separate gender from domesticity. Progress in separating gender from specific responsibilities already

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has occurred to a much greater extent in the workplace. While gender certainly plays a role in determining significant aspects of work life, as the continuance of occupational segregation and pay inequity attest, it has not been the only or major determinant of expected behavior as it is in domestic work. Instead the job itself and the structure of the workplace have provided role expectations that have been more salient in shaping behavior than gender. 34 The fact that housework takes place within the emotionally charged and intimate arena of the family makes it more problematic. Without structural and ideological supports for change, stereotyped gender qualities and tasks continue to have the aura of being "natural" and to determine the organization of domestic life. 35 Women have received little assistance from the state in bringing about changes in their family responsibilities. There is no support for quality child care, for example, and there are no laws requiring parental leave policies. Left to themselves, women have had to expend a great deal of energy in what Arlie Hochschild has called the "second shift" -the one that begins at home after the one at work ends. 36 The personal toll in exhaustion and the sense of frenzy that most women experienced was unremitting, and most of them complained about not having enough time. The tradition of female responsibility for domesticity continued to affect the lives of all three groups-the Negotiators, the Accommodators, and the Equalizers. Their varied experiences are important for showing the way in which change begins to take place. But the persistence of continuing domestic responsibility also indicates the difficult nature of such change.

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BETWEEN Two WORLDS ---0---

Much has changed in the lives of American women in the last forty years. There is no longer the intense ideological pressure for women to achieve identity solely through marriage. Women are marrying at an older age, more are remaining single, and more are divorcing. 1 Most women expect to be employed for a large portion of their lives, and middle-class women routinely look to careers as an integral part of their self-definition. Yet marriage and motherhood remain a significant element in many women's lives. Approximately 90 percent of white women are currently projected to marry, down from 97 percent in the 1950S, but still a considerable majority.2 Marriage also continues to have different implications for women than for men, as the experiences of the women in this study demonstrate. And, although employment opportunities have increased, discrimination and barriers to advancement for women still remain. Reflecting on the daily contradictions and ambiguities that she must face, Debbie, now an assistant professor of African history, talks of family life and her career: I feel, especially when my children are having some kind of a problem ... if only I had more time to devote to them. But then I also know that I would be unhappy being at home and . . . my career is not the kind of thing I can do part-time. So it just has to be that way and I have to live with the guilty feelings. 149

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The best thing is that basically I am doing essentially two things that I think are important and have meaning. Debbie's complex jumble of feelings-seeing family and career both as antithetical to each other and as providing her with a balance in her life-are a reaction to issues of change and continuity that affect not only the lives of the study participants but those of many women. CHANGES:

THE

NEW

IMPORTANCE

OF

CAREERS

One of the biggest changes in participants' lives is the centrality that their careers now have. Although many of them worked for pay before they were married or had children, they contrast their previous work experience, pointing to the sense of autonomy that their new careers give them, in contrast to their former jobs, over which they had little control. Helen, who had worked as a bookkeeper before she had children, began to feel differently about herself when she went to work as director of an adult education program. I began to have truly a professional identity in terms of having influence on what was happening in that position. I could create and do innovative things and push for it and demand resources for it. I think that takes professionalism. Nancy, who started as a bank teller and then decided to make banking a career commitment, felt that her sense of professionalism "evolved. It was not just overnight." It began when I moved away from the closed environment, the branch environment, into a customer service position. I was virtually working on my own. I did plan my own time. I did all my own scheduling and planning.

Being able to have an impact on the work they were doing and functioning autonomously made an enormous difference also in their feelings of self-esteem. As Debbie reflected: I have grown on the job-my sense of competence, efficiency, and being able to do a good job. From a person who lacked

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confidence and did not feel very good about myself for a long time, I definitely do feel good about myself. Virginia, an assistant professor of economics, talks about "a feeling of worth, of personal identity. You are doing something that has value and that makes you feel good." Other research results have also confirmed that job conditions have an important impact on the personality of workers and that challenging jobs that are complex and allow for self-direction result in a more favorable self-conception.} Almost all of the women have come to consider themselves professionals-that is, committed to their work and experiencing a sense of high competence. For some, the sense of professionalization came with the symbolism of achieving a certain milestone-for Stephanie Brown, an art museum administrator, it was when she became president of her state professional association; for Cynthia, it was when she joined a national writer's association. Others developed the sense of professionalism more slowly. Although Janet had taught nursing at the college level when she had a master's degree, it was only after she went back to school and reached the end of her doctoral studies that she was able to consider herself a true professional. The exceptions to this sense of professionalism are two of the Discontented Housewives, both of whom had yearned for careers. Ruth, the psychologist, answered "yes and no" when asked if she felt like a professional. Really I do but there is also a little corner of my mind that feels like an imposter. And I simultaneously feel that I'm very good at what I do, and at the same time that everyone is going to find out I'm really incompetent. There is still a corner of my mind that feels like I'm really a housewife pretending to be a psychologist. The depressed years of being at home full-time still linger with her. Ruth, who more than anyone in the study, fought against becoming a wife and mother, ironically finds herself unable to throw off that mantle. Julia, who so wanted to be a university professor, also has a dif-

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ferent view of herself as a lawyer than she would have had if she had had an academic career. She feels like a professional in the sense that I think I have skills that other people do not have and I know some area that other people do not [know] and I think I am good at it. I have a kind of control over that. But she still values an academic career more. Being a lawyer requires training and is difficult and so on. But it is not like the concept that you have of a calling. It is not like a calling that scholarship might be in that you are not necessarily producing something at the end of the work that you have personally been called on to give to humanity. Both Ruth and Julia are experiencing the influence of their old feelings and experiences on their current lives-Ruth's years of housewifery and julia's thwarted ambition. In addition to negotiating their way around such feelings and experiences, Ruth, Julia, and the other study participants also had to confront the persistence of traditional ideas about women in the workplace. CONTINUITIES: THE WORLD

OF WORK

There is no question that study participants as mature women enjoyed more support for both choosing, and advancing in, their careers than they had received when they were young women. But despite equal employment opportunity laws, most of them faced discrimination in their daily lives that continued to impede their careers. Most of it was informal with no laws technically broken, but the inconvenience and harassment inevitably took their tol1. 4 Dorothy, who had given up her ambition to be a scientist and had become a lawyer, does a lot of trial work. She bitterly reports on the different attitudes that male and female lawyers face. If you are a man, "you are immediately recognized, accepted; people are receptive to what it is you can do." If you are a woman, first you have to prove to them-I don't know what-either that you are not a woman or that you can outdo them even if

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you are a woman. It takes them a very long time for them to discard their attitude of derision. The expectation is that you will be a fool; that even if you know what the law is, that you will be unable to express it or to do the representation in a way which is socially acceptable. The mere fact, she says, that you come from this "other world" of women is enough to indict you. A male, to earn this kind of derision, has to be "an absolute buffoon and incapable and incompetent" but "if you are a woman you qualify simply because that is what you are." Dorothy, although visibly distressed by the kind of harassment she faces, deals with this reality by transforming it into a challenge and by enjoying the gratification of winning and "teaching them a lesson." I do my work in a way which eventually ends up earning the respect of the attorneys with whom I deal, so that eventually they rely on me completely. That is, in a sense, the reward for that beating you take at the beginning. Going through such an emotional wringer places a heavy burden on women. Dorothy shrugs it off by calling it "a fact of life" and a petty annoyance, but she also despairs at the waste of time that it takes to prove herself time and again. The so-called petty annoyances are, of course, not petty at all and can become serious obstacles. Nancy, the banker, is aware of a kind of condescension from her male colleagues that is compounded by their not being used to treating a woman as a peer. "Of all the men in administration," Nancy says, "not a single one of them has a wife that works. They are all at home, or have been at home with the children." This underscores the feeling that women who work outside the home-and particularly those with ambition-are trespassing on male turf. Nancy's friend applied for a senior managerial position and was told that they were looking for someone who could drink and play golf with the boys. While women are rarely told these things so explicitly, it is this kind of attitude, Nancy feels, that has resulted in the scarcity of women at the highest levels of banking.

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Such stereotyped ideas about males and females continue to limit women's access to jobs. Sandra, at last with engineering degree in hand, was willing to commute to the state capital to obtain the kind of job she most wanted and for which she was most qualified. But one of the company managers was not comfortable with this idea. He started asking me how I was going to take care of my family. I was ready to leave the family here, that was great! I was going to live up there during the week and come down here on the weekend. I was really looking forward to this. Everything seemed to be A-OK. But it was a "no" because he did not think that I should be away from my children. Even when women do manage to infiltrate the professions they often face pay inequities, as has been well-documented. 5 Jo, working as a doctor at a large medical center, was shocked when she discovered that her salary was less than a comparable male colleague's who had less experience and fewer degrees. I am still pissed. I am still really angry that I was hired for several thousand dollars less than him, and I am more valuable to this department and I am doing twice as much work. It still pisses me off! Many women also suffer from the captive wife syndrome. Bosses know that their husbands have jobs and are unlikely to leave so they feel freer to discriminate against wives. At Frances's first job as a faculty member she was underpaid. The university president operated on the assumption that a faculty member was worth his or her market value. In order to get a raise you had to get an outside offer. Frances's husband, AI, was really good at playing this game. But Frances, like most women in this study, knew that she and Al would never leave if she were the one with an offer, so because "I did not have the mobility, I did not try." Administration officials, of course, understood this also. Still, Frances was horrified to discover that AI's department chairman was able to get good raises for him by saying, "Well, look, you are underpaying Frances so why don't you give Al the extra money? And the dean said, 'All right.' "

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Virginia had a similar experience at her first faculty appointment in the economics department. A man, hired a month later, with the same education and experience, and scheduled to teach the same classes, was paid 15 percent more than Virginia. She complained: I told them that I did not think that was fair and they said, "Too bad." So I went to the equal opportunity people and so then they had to say, "Well, I guess we better pay her." Virginia felt strongly that they were paying her less "because they knew [her] husband was more or less captive there and was not going anywhere." As Virginia's experience and those of the other women indicate, discrimination in the workplace continues to be a problem that study participants must face. CONTINUITIES:

FAMILY

COMMITMENTS

The most difficult issue that individuals in this study had to deal with was balancing family life and career. In stark contrast to their husbands, who had pursued their careers confident that both they and their wives gave it first priority, these women routinely evaluated the impact of any career decision on their marriages and their families. By the time that the wives began their professional lives, most husbands were already well-established, accustomed to putting their careers ahead of their families and reluctant to make any changes. As a result, the women in this study handled their time and their careers very differently than their husbands did. Debbie, the African history specialist, believed that she was more willing than her husband, a real estate salesman, to do the work necessary to maintain the family so that, although she had a demanding job, "I will go and find the extra time to do something and my husband will not because it is just not that much of a priority for him." Gail, who had completed her graduate studies and had a temporary job teaching economics at a university, felt a real difference between the way she and her husband, Ken, balanced family life and professional life, even though Gail, as a Negotiator, had obtained quite a bit of help.

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His time is very short, as is mine. What he does is to allocate a fixed portion of it to the university. And there is a small portion to take care of things like cars and roofs and yards, which he does not like to do. 1 can never make any inroads on the university time. For me, my portion allocated to the university is not fixed and if necessary the family can make inroads and 1 keep thinking, "Why won't you be like that?" She hypothesizes a case where she tells Ken that their son will not be able to go to a swim meet because she is not available to take him. Gail is unsure whether she could then force Ken to go. She knows, however, that if the circumstances were reversed, "if it is either 1 go or my son doesn't get to go, 1 will go." Her husband considers the amount of time he spends at work nonnegotiable while Gail is willing to negotiate. Gail explains why she would behave differently: 1 give. 1 will put aside something that 1 need to do in order to take care of somebody else's needs if I think it is an important need and it will not get done if I do not do it. Although Gail portrays this response as idiosyncratic-"I guess I am that kind of personality" -she is, in fact, describing the stereotypical female response that both men and women expect of wives. In both Debbie's and Gail's cases, despite their strong commitment to work, the responsibility to the home continues to play a larger role in their lives than in their husbands', inevitably affecting the amount of time that Debbie and Gail can give to their careers.6 Study participants' sense of responsibility for their families also affected how they felt. Guilt is a reflex action for most contemporary mothers with careers, and the women in this study were no exception, as Debbie's remarks at the beginning of this chapter indicate. As Virginia says: 1 think it can make things uncomfortable for you. 1 don't think I ever got rid of it. My friend and I talk about it every once in a while that there are days when it just rises up. You think if only I had stayed home and folded socks my children would not be having these problems now.

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Evelyn, a social services agency administrator, agonizes over her youngest child, who has a number of problems, and worries that it is because she left her in day care when she went back to school for a graduate degree. I read an article that made an awfully big impression on me. It is a male writer writing to his mother, saying how bright she is and how relieved he was that she stayed at home and was there even though she could have been a lawyer or a doctor. Evelyn feels guilty because she feels that she made a choice that was more beneficial for herself than for her daughter. I saw myself happy at work and I saw myself not happy at home. I saw myself happy at work and wondering what happened to me that I was not happy just being with my kids because I saw other people that were. As Jo notes, "The struggle continues every day." The worst thing is still the real stress and guilt you feel for the hours that are spent away from the family. That is still the worst. It is always feeling like it is a compromise, that it is never a solution, that you are still cheating one for the other, and I still feel like I cheat the family. Gail has the same conflict: I feel guilt because I am not as good a mother as I might be. I am impatient and if I did not have so much pressure on me, I would not be. But I do not think I would be happy so I am not sure that would be the solution. This persistence of a special female responsibility for the family is one of the factors that cause women to scale back their ambitions. Ann says: I sacrificed. I could have studied harder in second and third years of law school. I could have done a lot more things if career was a primary goal in my life. I made choices which were profamily and anticareer. I did those deliberately. For those reasons

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I am not a Washington, D.C., lawyer. I am not involved in politics. I have been asked to run for the legislature and said "no" because of the family, although I do have an interest in that area. When Jo had a job at a medical clinic that she did not like, she said, "The hell with it." I resigned and stayed home for six or eight months and decided I would stay home for a while. I was ready to stay home with my kids and I would eventually figure out what I was going to do. Her career pattern where "I work like the devil and then I quit" involves her conflict with work and family. Part of it is that I just get to the point where I am overworked and I am not home enough. And then I realize that that is not for me, that I need to get back into using my talents, my profession, my training. And I go back ... and then the pace picks up, picks up, picks up, and then, instead of cutting back, I quit. Choices were not always clear-cut-family or career. For the most part, the women in this study struggled to find some solution that would accommodate both their ambition and their family concerns. Many found themselves tiptoeing through a mine field of work demands, their own ambition, and family needs. Dorothy and Gail, for example, both had periods when they put their careers first. Dorothy, the frustrated scientist who became a lawyer, exemplifies the tension between family and career life that many felt. Proclaiming the priority of her husband's career, she speaks reverently of the importance of his scientific work. Three times she began a law practice and closed it down to follow him to Europe for extended periods so that he could do his research which, she asserts, she "was more than willing to do." Finally, she felt that the interruptions were too disruptive for her clients, and she went to work in a government agency. When asked how committed she felt to her work, Dorothy replies:

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Well, I have more than one commitment in life. And obviously I am very, very highly committed to my family and to my husband. I don't really see doing things which will interfere with their ability to do what they want to do. Nevertheless, this devoted wife and mother is fiercely proud of her work and has found it difficult at times to reconcile the conflicting loyalties of family and work. When I do my work, there is basically no one who does it the way I do it. It's the kind of attention that is given. It's the kind of intensity. It's the kind of result and it's the way it is achieved. It's never achieved at anyone else's expense. It's never achieved at the cost of any integrity or honesty, under any circumstance. It's always achieved in a way in which the high standards of conduct are applied. If I win, I only win by playing by the rules and by playing fairly. But I don't allow myself the opportunity to lose. I'm convinced that there's nobody who has a higher level of commitment to the way the work is done and how it's done, when it's being done. And also there are very few people who get the results. This determination to succeed has meant that "I put in as much time as it takes." During one period, her office was severely understaffed and she was not only doing her own work but that of several other people. As a result, this self-professed family person was working every day, every night, and every weekend. Her sense of responsibility toward her clients, who could suffer harm if she did not get her work completed quickly, drove her on. She was unaffected by her husband's belief that her commitments were excessive and unwise. Looking back, she agrees that he was right. In an effort to break out of the cycle, she took a three-month leave, once again to follow her husband to Europe for his work. While she was gone, her agency hired several more lawyers for her unit and her work load is now manageable. Dorothy's experience is an example of a woman with clear commitments to the priorities of her husband's career who never-

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theless got caught up in the demands of her own, and, for a time, put her professional interests ahead of the family's. Finally, at his insistence and her acquiescence, she reined herself in and once again put her family center stage. Gail also found herself in a position of focusing on her career and then ultimately curtailing her ambitions because of family concerns. She had been a driven doctoral student, irritating her husband by even bringing her books to football games. It was obvious to everyone, she says, that "my number one priority was school. Family was second." Her ambition during that time was to become a university professor of economics, and the only way that she and her husband could envision it happening was for her to find a job and try commuting. But once the course work was over and she began to write her dissertation, her feelings changed. Her husband went away for a semester and, for the first time since she had started graduate school, she began to spend more time with her son. It was then she "realized I did not want to consider going away for a year or longer without my family. All these things began to shift and family became more important to me once again. I realized that I wasn't willing to give up my family for my career." She then pinned all of her hopes on getting a permanent job, instead of the interim one she held, at the university where she got her Ph.D. and where she had been a star student. And while some promises were made, a change in deans and department chairmen resulted in their not being kept. Angry and frustrated, she is now facing the fact that she might not have the university career that she had so wanted. Both Dorothy and Gail were willing to put their careers ahead of their families for a period of time. But, at one point, each made the decision to move family needs up in priority. That constant tug-ofwar between career and family, family and career, is one continually faced by this generation of women. The persistence of female responsibility for the family has a parallel in the continuing notion of male financial responsibility. Although most middle-class families actually need two incomes to live well, the idea of husband as provider continues to shape the career patterns of both sexes. Jo is aware, for example, that she has made

Between Two Worlds choices in her career as a doctor that her husband George might not have felt free to make. It would never have occurred to him to stay home for six or eight months, both because he considered himself the breadwinner and also because he did not possess Jo's sense of responsibility for day-to-day child tending. Barbara, as committed as she is to her career as a sociology professor, feels that the way in which she made her choice was stereotypically female. It was more important for me to have a really interesting life and I think that really is much more the female career orientation whereas I think men are more oriented toward understanding that they are fiscally responsible as well.

Frances, now a professor like her husband, also is aware of the different pressures men have had. I probably have not been as ambitious as a man would be. I think perhaps if I were a man, especially a breadwinner, I just would have thought much more consciously about particular professional goals and I would have worked toward them instead of having much more the feeling of drifting along. But Frances's explanation for not pursuing a career as ambitiously as her husband, AI, does not mention other motivations that caused women to curtail their ambitions. Given the responsibility for the family and the centrality of their husbands' careers, it behooved many of these women not to aspire too high. Frances claims: I have always gotten so much farther than I ever expected that I don't have the feeling that I want to be in the Nobel Prize class. I have never really had the feeling that I have to work hard to be in the top 2 percent. But the priority given to AI's career would have made that ambition unrealistic. Frances, for example, did not select the best graduate education she could find, as Al had done, but instead had to earn her doctorate at the university where Al had a job. Therefore, she

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did not receive as fine an education as he had. Her mobility was also limited, dependent as it was on AI's career. There are other people in my field who have made it to the top after coming out of just ordinary graduate schools by stepping from institution to institution. But you had to have a kind of mobility. Frances's modest ambition, therefore, could be viewed as a defense against the unattainable. As she says, "It would not have been realistic to have a sense of aspiration." Because she felt that there could not be two equally competitive careers, she was not willing to put herself through the anguish of wanting one. "I always had the feeling that if 1 put my career in the position that Al put his, 1 would just make myself unhappy."

OUT

OF

SYNCH

The pressure to restrain career ambitions was particularly strong on a group of study participants whose husbands were slowing down in their professional endeavors or were at a plateau just when their wives were starting out. Some of these husbands were sometimes dismayed by the increased intensity of their wives' career drives. Bob, Evelyn's husband, can only understand her ambition by relating it to how he felt in his twenties, rather than how he feels currently. Evelyn reports that he says: Now 1 am fifty years old and 1 am wanting to do lots of different things. 1 am a different person than 1 was then, including the fact that my job is only a job. And you-you are really 10 gear. "For us," Evelyn says, "that has been a problem." One way they have handled it is by having one or another of their five grown daughters accompany their father on the many foreign trips he wishes to take. Other families have not found as easy a solution. Nancy finds that the desire to keep her marriage stable stands in the way of advancing professionally. She wants very much to obtain

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a B.A. in finance so that she can advance in her banking career. She could do so by enrolling in a special program for bankers that necessitates an out-of-town stay for two weeks in the summer and two weeks in the winter. But Nancy believes that a commitment of this nature requires her husband Tom's support. But Tom had already expressed anxiety that her job appeared more significant to her than he was. As she developed her career, participated in professional organizations, and traveled all over the country, she sensed his uneasiness. Her desire to get a degree in finance seemed a further extension of her independence at a time when he was slowing down and wanted her to share his leisure time with him. Nancy, recognizing the problem, is torn between her traditional allegiances and her desire to move onward in banking. For the time being, at least, she has decided not to pursue the degree. Claudia, an artist serious about her work, finds herself running out of compromises. She also has a husband who wants to travel and wants "more time than I want to give"-or can give if she wants to be professionally successful. Her husband, a doctor in his late forties, is now in a position to devote more time to leisure activities and he wants Claudia to vacation with him one week a month. Claudia explains why this is impossible if she is to pursue her career seriously: I can't do it because for me to leave for a week, I really lose three weeks of serious work. The week before I go I'm running to fabricators getting things done, sort of tying up some details that were not going to be done while I'm gone and so I lose that week. I lose the thoughtfulness that goes into the work because I'm operating on a different brain level than I would otherwise. And then when I come back, it takes me a week to get all of these details put back together and to get myself settled down enough that I can get back in touch. Her husband does not understand-or respect-her need to devote so much time to her art. Consequently she has continued to deal with it through compromise-she shaves a day or two off the trip but goes anyway. She foresees difficulty in the future, however,

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because as she becomes involved with more exhibitions, she has less time to spare. And although she says that their marriage has lasted because they both come from unhappy families and that makes their marriage very important to them, she only gives their marriage a 60 percent chance of surviving. In at least one case, that of Ann, a lawyer, a wife has deliberately chosen to curb her ambitions because she sees increased success as a possible threat to her marriage. Ann says that her relationship with her husband is, at present, happy, but it has had its ups and downs and at least once they seriously considered divorce. Her ambivalence about the marriage is focused on the issue of financial support. On the one hand, she lists financial security as one of the reasons she stays with Vic. Her impoverished childhood made her value economic stability, she says. On the other hand she hesitates becoming too successful because then she would have to decide about the marriage without the excuse of financial security. Clearly, for Ann, independence and autonomy represent the same threats to marriage that they do to some of the husbands, like Nancy's. She envisions herself in an either/or kind of situation and defends herself against making a decision by constraining her career success.

CHANGES

IN

CAREER PRIORITIES

Despite the difficulties in combining two careers and the continuing responsibilities that women have for the family, there is no doubt that there has been some shift in how the participants in this study and their husbands think about participants' professional lives. In a few cases, and in special circumstances, wives' employment has begun to be considered on an equal footing with their husbands. In others, decisions about husbands' careers are no longer taken unilaterally but their effect on wives' paid work is also considered. Giving Priority to the Wife's Career Only a few of the women were able to make decisions about their professional work in the same ways as their husbands-by moving to another city or devoting extraordinary amounts of time to work.

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The fact that so few could focus on their careers in a wholehearted way indicates the difficulties involved, particularly for this generation of women still affected by tradition. A woman's career became central in the family only under extraordinary circumstances, usually when a wife either took over the provider role or had the potential for doing so. When Virginia completed her doctoral work in economics she decided that she would move to another city for an excellent faculty position. The family had moved once before for her benefitto a state with a doctoral program-at a time when her husband, Michael, was unemployed. She could justify that first move because it placed her in a position to help support the family as a graduate assistant when Michael had no job. Now, once again, there were family problems. During the previous two years Michael, who very much defined himself as the provider, had been employed only intermittently and her unmarried daughter had moved in with her baby. Both of these occurrences had caused enormous family stress. Although communication between Virginia and Michael had never been good, it almost ceased to exist. As a result, Virginia made the decision about the move on her own. It was kind of evolutionary because it was a very difficult decision to make and so I think it probably cost me an extra year in the Ph.D. program because every time I would sit down to write my dissertation I would think, "Oh my God, the sooner I get it done, the sooner I have to decide."

Virginia decided to put her career first but not without assessing the effect on her family. Although her children did not want her to leave, they did not raise an enormous fuss. My family'S view was that it was better for all of them if I did not go. They were very unhappy about it in terms of it was going to really disrupt their lives. Yet they are nice enough people so that they were not going to just continually harp at me about it. So, in a very usual pattern in our family, we just sort of let it go by default.

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Virginia was able to make the decision that was best for her career because her marriage was faltering and might end in the near future. Faced with the possibility that she might be without a husband, she considered it expedient to try to obtain the position that promised the best financial and professional possibilities. She also recognized that her major responsibilities for the children would soon come to an end. Only two children were at home, her sixteen-year-old and the unmarried daughter with her baby. Her nineteen-year-old daughter was already in college. I guess the way that I looked at it when I really thought about it is that my choices were clear. To stay here and take a second quality job from which I would never be able to move up to a first-class university, or cause all this disruption and go somewhere else. I thought, all right. Let us take a long-range view of this. Five years from now I will be in a situation where all my children will be gone. They are not going to stay in this city for me and I am in a position where the rest of my life I am going to say, "Could I have made it?" I have invested eight years of my life in doing this, and I felt that in a short time probably it was going to be very upsetting for a lot of people, including myself, but in the long run it would be all right. Virginia's sixteen-year-old daughter decided to move with her. Her husband, Michael, who had finally found a job and was very involved in raising his granddaughter decided not to move. But, as Virginia remarked, "it gave us space without anyone taking any steps that were irrevocable." Since then Michael has joined her and it looks like the marriage will survive. But the fact that, at the time she made her decision to move, the future of the marriage was uncertain and her children were almost grown made it possible for Virginia to make her career a high priority. At one point, several years ago, Cynthia's marriage was also not doing well, and this gave her the incentive to move to New York when the journal she was editing moved there. I wanted to go because that was really my dream. It is the big time. I figured that was where I belonged. I would wind up

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there one way or another. So I got this chance at the age of thirty-nine to live in New York on a large salary in an apartment of my own and work in publishing. At the time Cynthia felt angry with her husband, Joe, and was pleased to get away from him. He had just finished treatment for chemical and alcohol dependency and was completely sober for the first time in many years. The whole family had also gone through a treatment program and in the course of it Cynthia began to experience the rage and resentment that she had felt toward Joe but had suppressed during his years of drinking. As a result she wanted to get away. Joe said, "Don't go." But, after checking with her children, who ranged in age from fifteen to ten, and who said, "Sure Mom, we will be okay," she told him, "I am going, anyway." Cynthia had a wonderful year in New York editing the journal, particularly because she made an advantageous financial deal with the publishers, who relied on her during the transitional period after the move. She received a housing allowance, a huge salary, and a subsidized trip to her hometown every two weeks. But this temporary arrangement lasted only until the launching of the journal. Afterwards, all of these extras ended. Cynthia semi-seriously looked for another job in New York but, unable to find the kind of work she wanted, she moved back to her family and resumed her marriage with Joe. Both Barbara and Karen were able to make moves advantageous to their careers because, for a while at least, they became the principal breadwinners. When Barbara's husband lost his faculty position at the university, Barbara realized that, as far as her advancement went, "it would have been in some ways harder if he had gotten tenure." Because he did not, she was able to accept an offer in the sociology department of a first-rate university. It was a lucky break for me even though it was horrible for him. But it made it more straightforward and then he just followed me and found whatever job he could.

For Karen, it took her husband's near-fatal illness and the expectation that she would become the principal support for the family

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to make her feel justified in throwing herself into her nursing doctoral program. Jerry's cancer made her decide "that the only thing I could do about it was to finish school as fast as possible." So Karen started "working like a madwoman" on her dissertation eighteen hours a day and finished her doctorate in a record three years. Her belief that she was doing it for the family made it possible for her to commit herself in that way. Shaky marriages, husbands' unemployment, near-fatal illnessesthese were the extreme conditions necessary before these study participants felt they could give priority to their professional interests. Despite the involvement most had in their work, they were, in general, unwilling to jeopardize family life by insisting that their careers be given equal consideration with those of their husbands. Considering the Needs of Two Careers While disastrous circumstances might be required before wives' careers received priority or equal attention, some couples began to consider wives' job needs instead of totally ignoring them. Taking a wife's career needs into consideration was easier to do if there was an expectation that her career would be a successful one, either because it was already becoming well-established or because it was showing the potential for success. In both academic and corporate life, structural shifts have also made pursuing two careers more feasible. Nepotism rules that, until the 1970s, prevented the hiring of husband and wife no longer exist and, in fact, many universities and corporations now have spousal placement policies to accommodate the two-career family.7 Although these are not always effective, these policies constitute a recognition that two careers have to be considered. Frances's professional progress illustrates this change and also the rise in aspirations that so many study participants experienced. AI's career had been the driving force in their family, and Frances had dutifully followed him around the country. At one time she left a doctoral program that she was well on her way to completing and moved to another university where she literally had to begin work

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again on another doctorate. As noted before, she had never considered herself as ambitious as AI. When she went to graduate school, however, the experience began to socialize her into thinking of herself as a potential faculty member. But her aspirations rose slowly. I had the idea, "Wouldn't it be great to have a part-time job and teach a course?" And I had the feeling, "Gee, maybe I will even write an article someday, and have my name on an article." So my goals were always very low, and only very gradually the ante just always kept going up. By the time she had finished her doctorate and taught for several years she was unwilling to move unless there was also a place for her. The university understood this and offered jobs to both Frances and AI. Since that time she has written two books and many articles. If they moved again, Frances says, the move would have to be equally good for both of them. However, she is not completely certain what would happen if her husband were offered a job at a highly prestigious place, like Harvard, without a similar offer to her. That, she says, "would be a real test." Julia's and Ann's careers had also progressed sufficiently so that when their husbands wanted to move for better jobs, the two couples considered seriously the effect it would have on the wives' jobs. One of the deciding factors for Ann and Vic, for example, was that there was a reciprocal arrangement between their home state and the one they were moving to so that she did not have to study for another bar exam. When Julia and Gordon decided to move, Julia was at the point in her career when she was ready to look for a job, having just completed a law clerkship with a judge. This clerkship assured her of a good position no matter where in the United States she traveled. A decision not to move also reflected a consideration of both careers. Jo is interested in becoming a professor of medicine and is just becoming established. George, her doctor husband who wanted to move to a better situation for himself, is now willing to defer his plans for her, and they are consciously trying to work things out more evenly for both.

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Respect for the wife's career can also manifest itself in more subtle ways. Cynthia, whose marriage to Joe seems to have improved in recent times, feels that her work as a writer has become important and that her husband's academic career no longer has the priority that they both once assigned to it. That is a real change because both of us have articulated at various times in our life, that in our life together, that his career was primary. And we both believed it. What was articulated was that his work was the most important thing in our life and he had to have time and space to do that. Now, in the last several years, Cynthia has begun to think seriously of herself as a writer and with that has come her willingness to ask for what she needs. 1 remember asserting my right to a closed door, to not answering a phone, to not answer a call, to say, "I cannot do that. 1 am working." These examples are all indications that some couples, at least, are trying to work out more equitable ways of managing two careers. But the problems remain. Jo's and Ann's husbands are more considerate of their wives' professional obligations, but both are in the Accommodators group, meaning that their wives are still handling the major responsibility for the family. Cynthia might close the door to her study, but she is undoubtedly shutting out the mess that, she says, her husband has not adequately helped to clean and to which she will return. Therefore, no matter how considerate husbands have become about their wives' careers, not many are willing to make concessions with family life. HUSBANDS' CHANGE

AND

ATTITUDES: CONTINUITY

Most husbands of study participants belong to a generation that had expected a traditional family life and ended up with something dif-

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ferent. As Virginia, who went from being a full-time housewife to a dedicated college teacher of economics, says: His contract was of someone who was going to take care of him and keep his shirts ironed. And here he ends up married to someone who is a perfectly independent Ph.D. who does not take shit from anyone. He has had to learn to balance my needs and I think that is always difficult for someone when you have had a pattern that is very supportive and some of that support is taken away. It is uncomfortable, not only just emotionally but physically. Under such circumstances, husbands understandably feel ambivalent about the changes. Many husbands saw the benefits both to their wives and to the family, yet many of the changes that occurred in their wives' lives caused not only inconvenience but a threat. Karen's husband, Jerry, continues to be angry with her even though she supported him through a life-threatening illness and worked desperately to finish her Ph.D. in nursing to support the family in case he died. In Karen's view, "He is always mad at me because I wanted a life that had something to do with other than taking care of him and the children." Although they are in counseling together, Karen is not certain that her marriage can withstand the resentment that Jerry has toward her and his lack of support for her aspirations. Claudia's husband also is not willing to give her the time alone that she needs to support her work as an artist. She too is unclear whether her marriage will survive. Most of the husbands, however, despite their dissatisfaction with the hassles of a two-career family, appreciate their wives' financial contributions. Virginia reports: One of the nicer things that Michael said when I finished my Ph.D. was that it was really nice and that he felt it gave him a lot of freedom that we were not so completely dependent on him. He had not realized that it would be nice to have a more equal financial relationship.

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Debbie knows that her husband appreciates that we could not live very well on his salary alone. My salary has always been what has enabled us to live a more upper middleclass kind of life-style. The majority of the husbands also feel that they benefit from their wives' increased contentment. Despite the fact that he wants more of her time, Claudia's husband notices that she is "a noticeably happier, more positive person," as a result of her working. When she resumed her art work after a summer of reduced activity he commented, "Boy, you are a much nicer person to live with when you are working." Jeff knows, Debbie says, that if she were not working, "I would not be happy and that probably it enhances our relationship. And I think he is proud of what I have done." Ruth, who was in such a deep depression for so many years, now feels: I am a much happier, easier to live with person. Arnold doesn't have to live with someone who is depressed. I think he is proud of me. I am more interesting. I was terribly boring during those years. There are a few husbands, moreover, who have managed to move beyond their own personal situation and have begun to understand the broader issue of gender relations. Evelyn recounts her husband Bob's recent experience. He went to the retirement dinner of an old friend who once had been a coach, as Bob had been, in their hometown. Bob found that it was "like going back in time being with this family." The coach's wife, Mary, had been Evelyn's role model of how to be a proper Catholic wife-one that Evelyn felt that she had never lived up to. She was someone who went to all the football games, whose husband's career was everything. I mean she really was into it. She was not pretending, and they had seven kids, all of whom are doing extremely well. On this trip Bob went to their house and "Mary was still there cooking like mad, getting ready for a wedding next day, grinding

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ham salad, and here tonight is the retirement dinner for her husband." Bob said to Mary, "When are you going to retire? You know you are the one that should be having the dinner and special things." And Mary began to cry. Then they went to the dinner and, Bob said: I never realized how male-dominated this all was. The whole head table-not one woman up there-not even the wife. And finally they called Mary up and said, "We have a gift for you," and gave her this monstrosity of some sort of weird ceramic thing. Then while she was still up there, and she was not invited to say anything, the next master-of-ceremonies said, "All right, Mary come on up here." And finally someone said, "She is here. She is already here." A nonperson. Bob had seen all of that-the role of the wife, her nonpersonhood very clearly. This showed, Evelyn realized, that his consciousness had really been raised and that on a deeper level he had understood what she, and other women, have gone through. Ruth's husband, Arnold, a traditional man who had pressured Ruth to marry and have children, has also achieved new insights. I think he has been very responsive to the changing times. He is in a field where there are more and more women lawyers, more and more women judges, and I think he has accepted women in professional roles much more readily than a lot of men of his generation in his field, which was traditionally an all-male field. I think he has made a conscious effort to change. The enthusiasm that most husbands felt for their wives' financial contributions and happier companionship, however, did not necessarily translate into meaningful support for family work or for careers, as the chapter on housework has illustrated. Few were like Janet's husband, Neil, and Helen's husband, John, both in the Equalizer group, who were willing to make extensive personal modifications in their lives for the benefit of their wives' careerscutting back on his business in the case of John, and following his wife to the best graduate school possible, like Neil. Most of the husbands were willing to accept changes in their wives' aspirations only if it did not inconvenience them to any great extent.

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WORLDS

Most of the study participants are aware of the enormous changes that have taken place in their lives. As Susan says about herself and her friends: We lived ten years of our married lives in one world and then it turned absolutely upside down. In the same way that they have come to understand the restrictions on their mothers' lives, they now appreciate the limitations that their own have had. Ruth, who unhappily had to give up her ambitions to be a psychologist for a time, contrasts the situation of her earlier years with the current situation. There are day-care centers and more support "for doing things differently. There is a support that didn't exist. It is no longer something strange to be doing." Despite the realization that their choices were circumscribed, the majority of study participants are not prepared to devalue their earlier experiences as stay-at-home mothers. As Julia says, quite honestly: I don't want to go through my life with self-hatred thinking, "Oh, all those wasted years of being home with the children," as if that were nothing. And part of the problem with that, is it isn't esteemed and it is thought to be nothing. I don't want to reject my past like that either. So, in some ways, yes, I think I would have been better off. But I don't mean to say that I think that was all. Understandably, people do not want to think of a portion of their lives as wasted. But study participants' feelings about their domestic years also represent the persistence of their earlier values and attitudes toward motherhood. Many changes have occurred, but the cultural norm still insists that mothers are primarily responsible for the welfare of their children. 8 As an analysis of psychiatric journals in the mid-I98os indicates, mother blaming is ubiquitous and mothers are held accountable for children's problems. 9 Even some feminist scholars continue to have a fantasy of the perfect mother

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and hold mothers responsible for children's happiness. They criticize their mothers for not fulfilling expectations and set impossible standards for their own mothering. lo In such an atmosphere, it is understandable why most of those in the study evaluate their early decisions to stay at home in terms of its effect on their children and not on the repercussions these decisions had for their careers. Over half of the study participants believe that they made the right choice in staying home for a time. Ann, for example, believes it was important because "I think the primary years in a child's life are very important." Nancy, a Long-Termer who had to work during her first child's early years, feels that "if you can afford it, I think it is important that there's someone there to nurture, to be with those children, in that early time of their life. And it's a wonderful thing to explore, to experience, also." Even some of the Discontented Housewives, who still describe their times at home in language evocative of nightmares, view their decision to stay at home as the correct one. Karen, whose rage at staying home was monumental, says: I do not think I would want to go back to work full-time if I had a baby, I really do not. I do not think I could be working unless my kids are fairly independent and old enough so that they are really on their own. I do not think I could have done that. I mean I feel torn anyway. I think I would have felt a lot more torn with little kids. I think the kids got the good stuff they could have gotten out of my being at home. Gail, who had been infertile and had then been shocked to find out how difficult she found being at home, thinks: I might feel guilty if I had not, if I had him in a day-care center from the time he was born until the time he was in preschool. I might have felt guilty about that or if somebody else had raised him. I know what happened during those years and I think I am basically glad that I was there. Even those five study participants who are more ambivalent about their time at home focus on its effect on their children rather than its

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repercussions on their careers. Susan thinks that her kids "probably did benefit by having me at home even though I was not terribly happy being there." Sometimes I do think that maybe the kids are as healthy as they are in part because I so needed to be a good mother and I did so many good mothering things. Julia thinks she would have been happier if she had worked from the beginning because her feelings of insecurity and unhappiness were communicated to the children. On the other hand, a recent letter from a friend's daughter reminisced warmly about the good times she had in Julia's kitchen. "And then it made me think, well, maybe there was something more to the mothering. There was something going on there. It was not nothing." Two who stayed at home with their first two children but not their third are undecided which way was best. Marilyn worries that her third child, whom she put in day care, has more difficulties than her other two. Debbie was already launched on her career when she had her third and did not take time off. When asked about this decision she says, "Ask me in twenty years," meaning-let us find out how this child turns out. Only three women evaluate their decisions in terms of its impact on their careers, not their children. They conclude, unambiguously, that they would have preferred having continuous careers. Ruth feels certain that much of her many years of misery would have been alleviated if she had started her career earlier and had not sacrificed professional goals to be with her children. She does not hesitate to advise her daughters to develop their careers first. Barbara, a college professor, regretful that at forty she still does not have tenure, thinks that if she were a young woman today she would not stay home. Stephanie, who studied for her B.A. course-by-course over ten years while raising her children, would also have acted differently "if I had all the knowledge that I have today." She did not go back to work until her children were teenagers and found the transition from domestic life to the workplace difficult.

Between Two Worlds

177

You have a certain mentality in the home, doing housework and raising children and tuning in to children. To then try and go out in the work world is a jolt; it is a real shock to a system to be in one situation for several years and then go out and switch. Most of the women, however, would agree with Frances, who believes in some ways it was easier for her generation of women for whom there was little choice. She does not envy the young women she knows who are trying to build their careers and have babies at the same time, or who decide not to have children. She is relieved, she says, that she was not faced with those choices. Susan agrees: I do not envy them at all. There are times when I actually have said to a friend that sometimes I am glad that the women's movement did not come till my oldest kid was nine years [old] because I do not know what I would have done. I do not know how you do this. The question of "how you do this" remains a pressing one. The women in this book have taken one approach to the problem of raising children and having careers by spending the formative years in most of their children's lives at home. Despite their lack of regret for this decision, they had not been able to take into consideration their own talents and interests but set them aside for a time. These women between two worlds do not, however, spend a great deal of time bemoaning their past. Instead they are women who have, in Carolyn G. Heilbrun's words, "awakened to new possibilities."11 Heilbrun, in her moving book, Writing a Woman's Life, describes many women writers who came into their own only in their later years. Heilbrun observes that, as these women aged, some doors closed to them; at the same time, they found new doors opening to them. The women in this study welcomed these new openings although some of them were concerned about how far they could go. Gail, who was completing her graduate work for a Ph.D. in economics, feared that she would never get a regular university position. She was

CHAPTER

7

also acutely aware that if she did she would be starting out in her late thirties-a time when many academics are already well-established. For the same reason, Janet, who had been teaching nursing in a college with a master's degree and gave it up to pursue a Ph.D. so that she could do research, worried that she would be in her late forties when she went on the job market. But for most of the women, a feeling of excitement that they were just getting started combined with an awareness of women's longevity and the new retirement laws that eliminated mandatory retirement, made them feel that they had many years ahead of them. 12 As Stephanie, the museum administrator, said excitedly: Everything is growing for me, this is a time of growth and development and I have the attitude that, by golly, I've got forty good years ahead of me. What these women, and all midlife women, will do with these new opportunities-and the old constraints-remains unknown. As Heilbrun wryly notes, biographers do not say much about the late years of a subject's life "once she has moved beyond the categories our available narratives have provided for women." 13 It is up to midlife women, therefore, to create new narratives about their lives. The women in this study have begun that task.

CHAPTER

8

CONCLUSION ---0---

A life-course perspective on the lives of the twenty-two women described in this book has shown the ways that changing historical circumstances have affected the adult choices and opportunities of a transition generation. Although raised at a time when marriage and motherhood were considered the integral ingredients of female identity, their lives were ultimately not limited to this narrow definition. Instead, they were able to expand their own sense of self when increasing opportunities for women encouraged them to develop new aspirations. At the same time, however, continuities with the past remained. The family, the workplace, and gender ideology all retain traditional notions about gender relations and these ideas continue to influence women's options today. Taking a close look at this transition generation has made it possible to examine the extent to which they have been able to operate as historical agents shaping their own destinies and the degree to which their choices and opportunities have been determined by social-historical institutions. This issue has been of long-time interest to feminist scholars.! This book describes the ways that study participants have been able to maneuver as historical actors within a shifting cultural context that at times has promoted social change and at other times constrained it. At certain early periods in the lives of the women in this study, such as the postwar years, the oppressiveness of the ideology stifled career opportunities. Study participants thus found less space for 179

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negotiating desired choices than they found later, when the women's movement and increased opportunity in the workplace provided greater options. Even in the postwar period, however, study participants did not simply acquiesce to cultural prescriptions but struggled to carve out a self-identity that incorporated their talents and interests. Some of the women were able to pursue nontraditional career interests, at least for a time, even though others found they could not. That there were different responses-the Traditionalists and Nontraditionalists-even in such a small, homogeneous sample as the one described in this book, underscores the variability within a cohort and the way that personal circumstances-parental support, interests, and talents-could modify the effects of strong cultural sanctions regarding appropriate female activities. This variability is evident also in study participants' approach to staying at home full-time to raise children. Although all of them conformed to the same ideological definition of good motherhood as a full-time commitment, they differed in what they managed to make of the experience. The Long-Termers and Time- Outers organized a day-to-day existence that they considered both enjoyable and worthwhile. The Discontented Housewives, because of differences in temperament, attitudes toward domestic life, and circumstances experienced their time at home as much more oppressive. Once the women described in this book went back to work, they again demonstrated variations in the ways that they modified both their family and career situations. Differences in their marital situation, including an assessment of their husband's willingness to help, determined whether the wives were Negotiators and able to get some assistance, Accommodators who gave in and did most of the family work themselves, or Equalizers who were able to establish more equitable sharing. In their careers, also, there was variability in how far they were able to go in pursuing the best opportunities even though there had to be special circumstances, like a supportive husband, or drastic ones, like a disintegrating marriage, to enable them to pursue their careers in any way comparable to their husbands' dedication. These examples show some of the circumstances that enabled study participants to be active agents, negotiating and manipu-

Conclusion

lating social constrictions to satisfy their own ambitions and needs. The study participants' race and class privileges certainly played a role, offering considerable advantages. For most of them, the financial resources of their husbands made it possible to continue their educations and obtain graduate degrees necessary for prestigious professions. Several could afford to hire working-class women to assist in housework, child care, and food preparation. Their incomes also enabled them to buy more expensive prepared foods and household appliances, and this protected them from some of the timeconsuming labor and economies that working-class women must do to stretch inadequate incomes. As women, however, they had little more claim on state assistance-whether in the form of subsidized, quality child care or of laws that would mandate family leave policies-than working-class women. This last example underscores the conclusion that, despite the many ways that various women were able to negotiate their interests at different points in the life course, they all have had to function within the bounds of social institutions that inevitably set a limit on what most members of their generation could do. In their early years, for example, the majority of women, the Traditionalists, found it difficult even to think about developing aspirations that went beyond the prototypically feminine because their very thoughts and dreams were circumscribed by limited role models and opportunities. Those who managed to develop ambitions, the Nontraditionalists, met with obstacles later on and were stymied by lack of support in college or graduate school and by the ideological pressure to fulfill their female identity by marriage. Only when the cultural milieu changed in the late 1960s and 1970S could most of the study participants develop career ambitions and act on them. The women's movement, the need for two salaries, even in middle- and upper-middle-income families, and the increase in divorce and single-headc': :louseholds had resulted in a shiftsociety had come to accept that it was permissible and no longer deviant for women to look beyond marriage and to pursue work and even careers.2 At the same time, the expansion of the structure of opportunity made professional careers attainable. Once the cir-

CHAPTER

8

cumstances changed, women, like those in this study, were able to demonstrate their agency further by not only taking advantage of these new openings but by expanding the parameters of possibilities as they did so. Along with these new options, however, study participants still found serious resistance to change in institutions like the family and the workplace. The family, in particular, seems to have remained an island of traditional gender relations, untouched by the historic currents that lap against its edges. Despite increases in divorce, which have made family life less stable, the family continues to be experienced, as one author has noted, as "ahistorical, unchanging, and immutable." 3 Nowhere is this more evident than in the intransigence of gender roles. The family remains, in fantasy, if not in reality, the place where nurturance takes place and where women-despite all the expansion of their roles outside the family-are considered by themselves and others as responsible for that nurturing. Men continue to have a culturally sanctioned sense of entitlement in the family, a belief that they should and will be taken care of, as the study participants found when they tried to get assistance from their husbands with child care and housework. Most of those in this study struggled against their husbands' sense of entitlement, but there were limits to wives' willingness to insist on help. Not only did they believe that, as women, they were somehow ultimately responsible for family work, but they found that they could push their husbands only so far without causing a great deal of unpleasantness in the marriage. Most study participants wanted to remain in their marriages and were willing to do what was necessary to accomplish this, including backing off from demands for assistance when they met too much resistance. Most of them felt great affection for their husbands and an emotional investment in a relationship that had lasted so long. Undoubtedly, the economic difficulties that divorced women face also made separation an unappealing alternative, although some of them had thought about it at various junctures in their married lives. All of the study participants were interviewed at a time in their lives when their family life and careers were in a kind of equi-

Conclusion

librium. Despite the problems, the contradictory feelings, and the compromises, they were managing to stay in long-term marriages even though they had to modify their careers and lower their expectations of household help to do so. There were, however, signs of strain in a number of marriages. It was not clear whether Claudia would be able to dedicate herself to art as she wished to in the light of her husband's demands for more vacation time. Two other academics, Debbie, the African specialist, and Gail, the economist, were facing limited options unless they moved. These difficulties, and the less dramatic stresses in the lives of the others, are indicative of the ongoing struggle that many women face in trying to combine career and marriage. When it came to pursuing careers, those in the study also had to deal with the reality of a workplace that has done very little to accommodate women's continuing responsibility for family life. 4 As Janet G. Hunt and Larry L. Hunt point out, corporations pay attention to profit and not to meeting family needs. The corporate culture makes career advancement contingent on single-minded devotion to work, unconstrained by family responsibilities. s This is, as Hochschild has pointed out, the male model of work and achievement, one that leaves little room for family life. 6 Thus, the structure of careers continues to demand an investment of time and dedication that is difficult for many women to meet as long as they are considered responsible for the family. Little effort has been made to support programs like parental leave and flex-time that would make it possible for women to compete successfully with men. Couples are left to attempt individual solutions to these problems. Julia describes one such effort by telling a story about her young friend who is a very ambitious lawyer. Her husband, who is in graduate school, was the one who wanted to have a baby. The plan was that the husband would bring the baby into his office three times a week and his wife would do so twice a week. Well, the first time the baby comes he screams bloody murder. All the other graduate students leave. It is clearly impossible.

CHAPTER

8

Meanwhile, she is bringing the baby twice a week and she can't concentrate. And she is finding it really hard to do her job of mothering and put in this full-time work. It is terrifically demanding and exhausting and the question is "Who is going to do the staying home now?" She realizes that it is not a solution you can solve with a housekeeper. But if your work were only a 9 to 5 job you could solve it with a housekeeper, but you can't. Because you have to do love and attention and sustaining, and sometimes you have to work after hours. This anecdote, as well as the experience of study participants, indicates how difficult it is to combine a committed career with family life. As individuals involved in their own professional lives, the women in this study were no longer interested in a two-person career where both husband and wife concentrated on one careerhis. The new solution, like the old one, however, also relies on women. They are expected to remain responsible for family life and to modify their professional goals so that their husbands can concentrate on theirs. Most of all, women are expected to devise the strategies to make it all work. But, as this research has shown, there is a limit to the effectiveness of individual strategies, particularly as a means of making social and institutional change. Jo dropped out of the medical profession when she felt too overwhelmed and guilty about her children. Her doing so, however, was an individual solution that did nothing to modify either the way that medicine is practiced or the structure of family life where she, though a doctor like her husband, was held responsible for the functioning of the family. Debbie, an assistant professor of African history, worked as fast as she could in both taking care of the family and pursuing her career, but the costs had to be borne by her personally, both in terms of her sense of well-being and the impact this double duty had on her career. As these examples, and countless more from the lives of the women in this study demonstrate, husbands and wives are being asked to come up with personal solutions to problems-such as the organization of family life and of careers and the tension between family responsibilities and employment-that have social and

Conclusion

political dimensions. As both the experiences of those in this book and many other studies have demonstrated, it is the women who are expected to resolve problems arising from trying to handle both family and professional lives. Society has not tackled politically the inherent conflicts and contradictions that these dual responsibilities engender. Young, educated, middle-class women today are not confronted with the same choices as the earlier generation, who were caught between two worlds. Many of these recent cohorts are marrying later, or not at all, having fewer children, or none. Increasing numbers are adopting the male model of continuous work and not taking time out for child care. But the issue of how to combine career and family remains as alive for young women today as it was-and continues to be-for their middle-aged forebears described in this book. Weighing all the changes and continuities with the past that characterize the lives of study participants, it appears that the definition of female identity for middle-class women has undergone a great deal of change; yet many traditional ideas of womanhood have not been discarded. Marriage and motherhood are no longer the sole defining parameters; middle-class female identity has expanded to include a professional dimension. 7 Despite all the changes that have occurred in women's lives, however, nothing revolutionary has happened-no matter what the resources or the helpfulness of spouses or the many privileges that being white and middle class bring-as long as women have to dream up the strategies, make the compromises, settle for lesser careers, protect the marriage, and preserve the quality of life in the family. Unlike their husbands, whose career needs and family roles are rendered compatible by women's domestic work, middle-class women like those in this study, require a convergence of several favorable circumstances in addition to financial resources, if they are to "have it all." They must receive some cultural sanction for their careers, compatible with their family needs as well as their ambitions, and they must be able to negotiate changes in their family lives. It is a delicate balancing act, constrained by institutional practices and family hierarchies often hostile to their success. As the experience of those in this study indicate, change occurs

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slowly, but the accretion over time of small modifications can, nevertheless, make a difference. The study participants who saw marriage and motherhood as their only choices are not the same women today that they were thirty years ago. Cultural and societal institutions that funneled them into full-time domesticity and gave them little room to consider other choices have changed dramatically. Becoming professional workers has given them a confidence and an autonomy that they never imagined when they were young girls growing up in the postwar years. Perhaps, most encouragingly, they can offer their daughters models for a more varied and broader vision of life than their mothers offered them. 8 As Claudia says, the best thing in the interaction between her work and family is "what I'm giving my daughter, and that's permission to do the same thing-to develop herself and to have a career and to have priorities outside the home." Commenting on the impact of her life on her daughters, Virginia believes that "it has given them a picture that says that they have choices in their own lives, that I didn't have a picture of." That new model of womanhood is perhaps the best gift that the women in this study can give to their daughters.

NOTES ---0---

PREFACE I. The comments on this point by Judith E. Smith, Boston College, on the panel, "Reconstructing the 1940s: New Perspectives on Ideology and Activism" at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Douglass College, June 1990, helped me clarify my evidence. 2. Kathleen Gerson, Hard Choices (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Rosanna Hertz, More Equal Than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Arlie Hochschild, Second Shift (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Aasta S. Lubin, Managing Success: High Echelon Careers and Motherhood (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987). The similarity of themes explored in the books cited above and particularly in the later chapters of this book, where the conflicts between marriage and career are described, demonstrates that particular ideas seem to become salient at the same time. Gerson's book primarily looks at a younger cohort than the one I describe.

CHAPTER

I

I. Each participant will be identified by her full name the first time she is mentioned. 2. William H. Chafe, The American Woman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 174-225. 3. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1974),72-73. 4. Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: Amencan Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 10-II, 16-36.

[88

Notes

5. Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981),21-23,34-35, 6. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions (New York: Free Press, 1988), 178; Mary P. Ryan, Womanhood in America (New York: Franklin Watts, 1983), 259-60. 7. William H. Chafe, Women and Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 15-16. As Nadya Aisenberg and Mona Harrington have pointed out in their study of academic women, literature has also modeled a traditional life pattern for women through the recurrent theme of the "marriage plot." This plot revolves around the heroine's goal of marriage. The marriage plot serves all women, "as a guide for their proper conduct and a measure for their success" (Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove [Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988],6). 8. Wini Breines, "Domineering Mothers in the 1950S: Image and Reality," Women's Studies International Forum 8, no. 6 (1985), 601-8, esp. 603; Karen Anderson, Wartime Women (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981), esp. 174-75. 9. Breines, "Domineering Mothers in the 1950S: Image and Reality," 601. 10. Life 41 (December 24, 1956): 108-16. II. Wini Breines, "The 1950S: Gender and Some Science," Sociological Inquiry 56, no. I (1986): 69-92; Breines, "Domineering Mothers in the 1950S: Image and Reality," 602-3. See also Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: IjO Years of the Experts' Advice to Women (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1979),239-40. 12. Phyllis A. Katz, "The Development of Female Identity," Sex Roles 5, no. 2 (1979): 155-77. How both girls and boys are socialized to behave in the way that is considered culturally appropriate for their sex is the subject of a variety of theories. A good summary is found in Irene H. Frieze, Jacquelynne E. Parsons, Paula B. Johnson, Diane N. Ruble, and Gail L. Zellman, Women and Sex Roles: A Social Psychological Perspective (New York: Norton, 1978), 95-134. For an elaboration of cognitive theories, see Sandra Lipsitz Bem, "Gender Schema Theory: A Cognitive Account of Sex Typing," Psychological Review 88, no. 4 (1981): 354-64. In her feminist reinterpretation of psychoanalytic theory, Nancy Chodorow argues that such theories as social learning and cognitive theory account for behavior that is built on an already established core gender identity-an unquestioned knowledge of one's sex-that develops in the first two years of life. This identity develops as a result of child-mother interaction. Boys learn their gender identity by

Notes separating from their mother, defining themselves as "not-females," while girls have more continuity with their same-sexed mother. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). 13. Candance West and Don H. Zimmerman, "Doing Gender," Gender and Society I, no. 2 (June 1987): 125-3I. 14. John D'Emilo, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 40-53. 15. Sloan Wilson, "The Woman in the Gray Flannel Suit," New York Times Magazine, January 15, 1956, 15, 36, 38, 42. 16. Ibid., 38. 17. Ferdinand Lundberg and Marynia Farnham, The Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (New York: Harper & Bros., 1947), 382-84, 363-66. 18. May, Homeward Bound, 16-36.

CHAPTER

2

I. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1974),72-73. Psychological theorists differ over what is most important in sex-role learning. Identification theorists, such as Freud, argue that the same-sex parent is most influential, while social-learning theorists believe that children imitate a variety of models. This study, while emphasizing the significance of mothers to their daughters' development, also takes into account the many other influences on their lives such as the media and schooling. Irene H. Frieze, Jacquelynne E. Parsons, Paula B. Johnson, Diane N. Ruble, and Gail L. Zellman, Women and Sex Roles (New York: Norton, 1978), 97-107. 3. Greer Litton Fox, "'Nice Girl': Social Control of Women through a Value Construct," Signs 2, no. 4 (Summer 1977): 806. 4. Diane Mitsch Bush, "The Impact of Changing Gender Role Expectations upon Socialization in Adolescence: Understanding the Interaction of Gender, Age, and Cohort Effects," in Research in Sociology of Education and Socialization, ed. Alan C. Kerckhoff (Greenwich, Conn.: J AI Press, 1985); John P. Hill and Mary Ellen Lynch, "The Intensification of Gender-Related Role Expectations during Early Adolescence," in Girls at Puberty: Biological and Psychosocial Perspectives, ed. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Anne C. Petersen (New York: Plenum Press, 1983), 201-28; Phyllis A. Katz, "The Development of Female Identity," Sex Roles S. no. 2 (1979): 170-7I. 5. Lynda E. Boose, "The Father's House and the Daughter in It: The 2.

Notes Structures of Western Culture's Daughter-Father Relationship," in Daughters and Fathers, ed. Lynda E. Boose and Betty S. Flowers (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 19-74, esp. 34-36. 6. A wonderful autobiographical account of the ambivalences of traditional female socialization is found in Joan Huber, "Ambiguities in Identity Transformation: From Sugar and Spice to Professor," in Academic Women on the Move, ed. Alice Rossi and Ann Calderwood (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1973). 7. Aletha Huston-Stein and Ann Higgins-Trenk, "Development of Females from Childhood through Adulthood: Career and Feminine Role Orientations," in Life-Span Development and Behavior, ed. Paul B. Baltes (New York: Academic Press, 1978), Vol. I, 284. 8. For a discussion of why young women found engineering a difficult choice see Alice S. Rossi, "Barriers to the Career Choice of Engineering, Medicine, or Science among American Women," in Women and the Scientific Professions, ed. Jacquelyn A. Mattfeld and Carol G. Van Aken (Cambridge, Mass: M.LT. Press, 1965), 51-127, esp. 95-98. 9. Hilary M. Lips, Sex and Gender: An Introduction (Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 1988), 240-41. 10. Peter Gabriel Filene, Him/Her/Self: Sex Roles in Modern America (New York: New American Library, 1974), 175-76. II. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, "Afterword," in Daughters and Fathers, ed. Lynda E. Boose and Betty S. Flowers (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989),419.

CHAPTER

3

I. Neither Helen nor Stephanie went to college after high school. Helen's parents did not support her attendance, so Helen worked as a secretary for several years before marrying and then staying home. Stephanie became pregnant when she was a senior in high school. She married her boyfriend and completed her high school degree through correspondence. 2. Shirley S. Angrist and Elizabeth M. Almquist, Careers and Contingencies: How College Women Juggle with Gender (New York: Dunellen, 1975), 8. 3. Pamela Roby, "Institutional Barriers to Women Students in Higher Education," in Academic Women on the Move, ed. Alice S. Rossi and Ann Calderwood (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1973), 37-56; Roby, "Structural and Internalized Barriers to Women in Higher Education," in Toward a Sociology of Women, ed. Constantina Safilios-Rothschild (Lexing-

Notes ton, Mass.: Xerox College Publishing, 1972), 121-40; Pepper Schwartz and Janet Lever, "Women in the Male World of Higher Education, in Academic Women on the Move, 57-77. 4. Ann Oakley, Subject Women (Oxford, Eng.: Martin Robertson, 1981), 226. 5. Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 191. 6. Quoted in Paul A. Carter, Another Part of the Fifties (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 86-87. 7. Hanna Papanek, "Men, Women, and Work: Reflections on the TwoPerson Career," American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 4 (January 1973): 85 2 -7 2 • 8. Angrist and Almquist, Careers and Contingencies, 32-33. 9. Personal communication from Karen Anderson, History Department, University of Arizona. 10. Colette Dowling, Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence (New York: Summit Books, 1981). II. A review of the fear of success literature is found in Hilary M. Lips, Sex and Gender: An Introduction (Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 1988), 273-75· 12. Patricia Albjerg Graham, "Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education," Signs 3, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 759-73, esp. 77 1-72. 13. Roby, "Institutional Barriers to Women Students in Higher Education," 52. 14· Ibid., 51. 15. Judith S. Bridges and Mary S. Bower, "The Effects of Perceived Job Availability for Women on College Women's Attitudes toward Prestigious Male-Dominated Occupations," Psychology of Women Quarterly 9 (1985): 26 5-77. 16. Sara E. Rix, ed., The American Woman 1987-1988: A Status Report (New York: Norton, 1987), 299, Table 9. 17. Ann Oakley, Woman's Work: The Housewife, Past and Present (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 187-91; Edwin M. Schur, Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Social Control (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 82-83. 18. Schur, Labeling Women Deviant, 89. 19. Benjamin Spock, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1945),484. 20. Bernice L. Neugarten and others have discussed the idea of age norms

Notes -a prescriptive timetable for major life events such as marrying and having children. These encourage age-appropriate behavior by inculcating a sense of being "on time" or "off time" for these events. Bernice L. Neugarten, Joan W. Moore, and John C. Lowe, "Age Norms, Age Constraints, and Adult Socialization," in Middle Age and Aging, ed. Bernice L. Neugarten (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 22-28. For an argument against using the concept of age norms in research see Margaret Mooney Marini, "Age and Sequencing Norms in the Transition to Adulthood," Social Forces 63, no. 1 (September 1984): 229-44. 21. Diane Mitsch Bush and Roberta G. Simmons, "Socialization Processes over the Life Course," in Social Psychology: Sociological Perspectives, ed. Morris Rosenberg and Ralph H. Turner (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 133-64. 22. Dorothy E. Smith, "A Sociology for Women," in The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Julia Sherman and Evelyn Torton Beck (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 137.

CHAPTER

4

1. Alice S. Rossi, "Transition to Parenthood," Journal of Marriage and the Family 30, no. 1 (February 1968): 26-39, esp. 35-36. 2. Ann Oakley, The Sociology of Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 174. See also Jessie Bernard, The Future of Motherhood (New York: Dial Press, 1974),77: and Betsy Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood (Sydney, Australia: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), esp. 45-49. 3. Oakley, The Sociology of Housework, 177· 4. Bernard, The Future of Motherhood, 67; Ann Oakley, Women Confined: Toward a Sociology of Childbirth (New York: Schocken Books, 1980), 97; Wearing, The Ideology of Motherhood, II5-19. The significance of social and economic circumstances for parenting is also described in Debra Umberson, "The Importance of Context," Journal of Family Issues 10, no. 4 (December 1989): 427-39: and Karen Goldsteen and Catherine E. Ross, "The Perceived Burden of Children," Journal of Family Issues 10, no. 4, (December 1989): 504-26. 5. Oakley, Women Confined, 250, 260-73; Grace Baruch, Rosalind Barnett, Caryl Rivers, Lifeprints (New York: McGraw-Hill, 19 83), 34-54; Leonard 1. Pearlin, "Sex Roles and Depression," in Life-Span Developmental Psychology, ed. Nancy Datan and Leon H. Ginsberg (New York: Academic Press, 1975), 191-207, esp. 75.

Notes

193

6. Pearlin has found that housewives who lack this sense of the future feel depressed ("Sex Roles and Depression," 200). 7. Bernard, The Future of Motherhood, 31; Oakley, Women Confined, 64, and Woman's Work, 186-221; Edwin M. Schur, Labeling Women Deviant: Gender, Stigma, and Social Control (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 82-83. 8. Oakley, Women Confined, 269.

CHAPTER

5

I. Ethel Klein, Gender Politics: From Consciousness to Mass Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), 119; Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules: Searching for Self-FulfiLLment in a World Turned Upside Down (New York: Random House, 1981). 2. Kathleen Gerson describes this cohort in Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work, Career, and Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 3. Judith M. Bardwick, "The Seasons of a Woman's Life," in Women's Lives: New Theory, Research and Policy, ed. Dorothy G. McGuigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Continuing Education of Women, 1980), 53. 4. A number of factors were responsible for the increased participation of women in the labor force at the end of World War II-economic expansion, particularly in jobs that were traditionally female, and the desire for a standard of living that could be maintained only by two incomes. The motive to seek employment was reinforced by a decline in real wages caused by inflation and recessions (Eileen Appelbaum, Back to Work [Boston: Auburn House, 1981], chap. I). 5. The percentage of physicians who were women rose from 8.9 percent to 10.7 percent; managers and administrators from 16.6 percent to 24.6 percent; and writers-artists (this category also includes entertainers) from 30. I percent to 37.8 percent. Less impressively, engineers rose only from 1.6 percent to 2.9 percent. Academia, which attracted seven of the women in this study, had a slightly more complicated history. Until recently, the highest proportion of women faculty had occurred in the 1920S, and then began to decline, reaching an all-time low of 21. 3 percent in 1960. By 1979 it had increased to 28.3 percent. Appelbaum, Back to Work, 7, William H. Chafe, The American Woman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 93-94; Patricia Alb-

194

Notes

jerg Graham, "Expansion and Exclusion: A History of Women in American Higher Education," Signs 3, no. 4 (Summer 1978): 764; Barbara Miller Solomon, In the Company of Educated Women (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985), 189. 6. Barbara Bergmann, The Economic Emergence of Women (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 5-6; Janet Zollinger Giele, ed., Women in the Middle Years: Current Knowledge and Directions for Research and Policy (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1982), 121. 7. Robert V. Wells, Revolution in American Lives (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), 233. As Ethel Klein has noted, at the beginning of the twentieth century women spent most of their adult life in child care because they began having their average of 3.9 children at age 23, delivered them over a twelve-year period, and had a life expectancy of age 66 (Klein, Gender Politics [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984], 51). 8. Klein, Gender Politics, 56, 60. 9. Andrew J. Cherlin, Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986), 21-26; Winifred D. Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970S (Boston: Twayne, 1988), 130-34. 10. William H. Chafe, Women and Equality: Changing Patterns in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 97. II. Klein, Gender Politics, 2;JudithE. Smith, "A Sociology for Women," in The Prism of Sex: Essays in the Sociology of Knowledge, ed. Julia A. Sherman and Evelyn Torton Beck (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979), 136. 12. Yankelovich, New Rules, 3. 13. Ibid., 5; Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chap. I and passim. 14. Yankelovich, New Rules, 91. 15. For a discussion of the impact of maternal employment on daughters, see Lois Wladis Hoffman, "Changes in Family Roles, Socialization, and Sex Differences," American Psychologist 30, no. 8 (August 1977): 644-57. 16. For example, there was a 102 percent increase in older female college students (ages 25 to 34) between 1970 and 1974, compared to 46 percent for men (Roxann A. Van Dusen and Eleanor Bernert Sheldon, "The Changing Status of American Women," American Psychologist 31, no. 2 [February 1976]: 109). For a discussion of the impact of historical changes on the labor force participation of a cohort aged forty and older in the 1970s, see Phyllis Moen, Geraldine Downey, and Niall Bolger, "Labor-Force Reentry among U.S.

Notes

195

Homemakers in Midlife: A Life-Course Analysis," Gender and Society 4, no. 2 (June I990): 230-43. I7. Wandersee, On the Move: American Women in the 1970s. I8. Gerson, Hard Choices, I2-22. I9. Leonard I. Pearlin, "Sex Roles and Depression," in Life-Span Developmental Psychology, ed. Nancy Datan and Leon H. Ginsberg (New York: Academic Press, I975), I98. 20. A number of other studies have identified husbands' supportive attitudes as crucial in supporting some women's decisions to work. For a review, see Ann Statham and Patricia Rhoton in Unplanned Careers: The Working Lives of Middle-Aged Women, ed. Lois Banfill Shaw (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, I986), 77-92. 2I. Sheila M. Rothman, Woman's Proper Place (New York: Basic Books, I978), I78-88; 224-3I. 22. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Women in Law (New York: Basic Books, I98I), 5, I5, 51. Despite law school contentions that early socialization was responsible for the small number of female law students, Epstein believes that discrimination was to blame. She found that the number of women admitted remained suspiciously stable over the previous twenty years when she interviewed the major law schools in New York and elsewhere in I965 and I972. 23. Jean W. Campbell, "Women Drop Back In: Educational Innovation in the Sixties," in Academic Women on the Move ed. Alice S. Rossi and Ann Calderwood (New York: Russell Sage Foundation), 93-I24. 24. Ann Marriner-Tomey, "Historical Development of Doctoral Programs from the Middle Ages to Nursing Education Today," Nursing and Health Care II, no. 3 (March I990): I32-37. 25. Joanne Miller and Harold H. Garrison, "Sex Roles: The Division of Labor at Home and in the Workplace," Annual Review of Sociology 8 (I982): 249. 26. Alice Kessler-Harris, Out to Work (New York: Oxford University Press, I982), 3I9. Gerson has a similar observation on the younger cohort she studied, stressing their special position on the cutting edge of social change, (Hard Choices, 39). I would suggest that it is true also of all women who are assuming nontraditional roles. 27. Paul B. Baltes, "Life-Span Developmental Psychology: Some Converging Observations on History and Theory," in Life-Span Development and Behavior, ed. Paul B. Baltes and Orville G. Brim, Jr. (New York: Academic Press, I979), 2: 256-79; Bardwick, "The Seasons of a Woman's Life,"

Notes 35-57; Glen H. Elder, Children of the Great Depression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974); Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950); Daniel J. Levinson, The Seasons of a Man's Life (New York: Knopf, 1978); Jeylan T. Mortimer and Roberta G. Simmons, "Adult Socialization," in Annual Review of Sociology 4 (1978): 421-54, ed. Ralph H. Turner, James Coleman, and Renee Fox; George E. Vaillant, Adaptation to Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977).

CHAPTER

6

1. Jeylan T. Mortimer and Roberta G. Simmons, "Adult Socialization," Annual Review of Sociology 4 (1978): 421-54, ed. Ralph H. Turner, James Coleman, and Renee Fox. 2. The issue of change and continuity over the life course is addressed in a series of essays in Orville G. Brim, Jr., and Jerome Kagan, eds., Constancy and Change in Human Development (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). 3. The problems of finding out exactly whether, and to what extent, husbands have increased their participation in housework are indicated by Joseph H. Pleck's summary of research on the amount of sharing (Working Wives/Working Husbands [Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1985]). He says that it is difficult to compare studies of housework that use differing methodologies and evidence and finds that the questions researchers used are sometimes vague. He summarizes by saying that "a variety of studies demonstrates increases in husbands' average amount of time spent in family roles" (155). He nevertheless concludes that husbands do much less than wives (158). 4. Joanne Miller and Harold H. Garrison, "Sex Roles: The Division of Labor at Home and in the Workplace," Annual Review of Sociology 8 (1982): 237-62; Joseph H. Pleck, Working Wives/Working Husbands; Margaret Mietus Sanik, "Division of Household Work: A Decade Comparison-1967-1977," Home Economics Research Journal 10, no. 2 (December 1981): 175-80. A survey by the Pillsbury Company found that when it comes to preparing and eating meals the fastest growing group in the country is the "Chase and Grabbits." The "Happy Cookers" who cook three meals a day have declined to 15 percent of the population, down 35 percent from fifteen years ago (Betsy Morris, "Are Square Meals Headed for Extinction?" Wall Street Journal, March 15, 1988, Section 2, p. 37). Interestingly, women in the paid

Notes

197

work force do not use labor saving devices, such as microwaves and dishwashers, more than those who are not. (Myra H. Strober and Charles B. Weinberg, "Strategies Used by Working and Nonworking Wives to Reduce Time Pressures," Journal of Consumer Research 6 [March 1980]: 338-48). 5. See, for example, Pat Mainardi, "The Politics of Housework," in Sisterhood Is Powerful, ed. by Robin Morgan (New York: Vintage Books, 1970),447-54. 6. In one national poll-the Merit Report-although more than half interviewed said that couples should share meal preparation equally, three out of four wives actually did the cooking. Karen Barrett, "Two Career Couples: How They Do It," Ms. 12 (June 1984): 39-42, 111-14, esp. 3940. In another poll, conducted by Media General-Associated Press, nine in ten respondents thought that couples should share housework equally when both worked full-time. But in 57 percent of those couples, women did most of the cleaning (Tucson Citizen, June 16, 1986, lA, 2A). Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz also found in their survey of thousands of American couples that "while husbands might say they should share responsibility, when they broke it down to time actually spent and chores actually done, the idea of shared responsibility turns out to be a myth" (American Couples [New York: William Morrow, 1983], 145). Also see the study of 489 couples in Dana V. Hiller and William W. Philliber, "The Division of Labor in Contemporary Marriage: Expectations, Perceptions, and Performance," Social Problems 33, no. 3 (February 1986): 191-201. See also Arlie Hochschild, Second Shift (New York: Viking, 1989). 7. Janet G. Hunt and Larry L. Hunt, "Dual Career Families: Vanguard of the Future or Residue of the Past?" in Two Paychecks: Life in Dual-Earner Families, edited by Joan Aldous (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1982), 41-59, esp·42-46. 8. For a discussion of how the provider role influences the reallocation of housework, see Joann Vanek, "Household Work, Wage Work, and Sexual Equality," in Women and Household Labor, ed. Sarah Fenstermaker Berk (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980),283; and Jane C. Hood, Becoming a TwoJob Family (New York: Praeger, 1983), 113-39. In a very interesting study, Hood contends that women can command more household assistance if they come to be redefined as coproviders. 9. On the patriarchal nature of family and housekeeping, see Heidi I. Hartmann, "The Family as the Locus of Gender, Class, and Political Struggle: The Example of Housework," Signs 6, no. 3 (Spring 1981): 366-94.

Notes 10. Review of these factors are found in Miller and Garrison, "Sex Roles: The Division of Labor at Home and in the Workplace"; and Pleck, Working Wives/Working Husbands. Studies differ on what the salient factor is. On the effect of husband's higher income: One study finds that husbands' higher income translates into less sharing of housework (Julia A. Ericksen, William L. Yancey, and Eugene P. Ericksen, "The Division of Family Roles," Journal of Marriage and the Family 41, no. 2 [May 1979]: 301-13); while another focuses on the differences between salaries, finding that the greater the husband's salary is than the wife's, the less housework he does (Catherine E. Ross, "The Division of Labor at Home," Social Forces 65, no. 3 [March 1987]: 816-33)· On the effect of the husband's education there are contradictory findings. Ross found the higher the husband's education, the more he participated, while K. F. Walker and M. E. Woods found a weak effect (Time Use: A Measure of Household Production of Family Goods and Services [Washington, D.C.: American Home Economics Association, 1976]), as cited in Miller and Garrison, "Sex Roles: The Division of Labor at Home and in the Workplace," 241. On the effect of a wife's education: Some results find positive effects on husband's participation, (Erickson, Yancey, E. Erickson), others no effect (Ross). On the effect of a wife's employment: Shelton found that employed women spent less time on housework. Nevertheless, whether wives were employed did not effect the aggregate amount of time husbands spent on housework (Beth Anne Shelton, "The Distribution of Household Tasks: Does Wife's Employment Status Make a Difference?" Journal of Family Issues II, no. 2 [June 1990]: 115-35). II. Barrie Thorne, "Feminist Rethinking of the Family: An Overview," in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, ed. Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom (New York: Longman, 1982), 1-24. 12. On the connection between housework and emotion work, see Ruth Schwartz Cowan, '''The Industrial Revolution' in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the Twentieth Century," in Women's America, ed. Linda K. Kerber and Jane DeHart Mathews (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 324-38, esp. 332, 335. See also, Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), particularly pp. 162-70. 13. Marjorie L. DeVault, "Doing Housework: Feeding and Family Life," in Families and Work, ed. Naomi Gerstel and Harriet Engel Gross (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 188.

Notes

199

14. See also Rosanna Hertz, More Equal Than Others: Women and Men in Dual-Career Marriages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 65-67. 15. Harvey J. Fields, "About Men: On-the-Job-Training," New York Times Magazine, January I, 1984, p. 29. See also Mary Bralove, "For Middle-Aged Man, A Wife's New Career Upsets Old Balances," Wall Street Journal, November 9, 1987, I; and Ronald C. Kessler and James A. McRae, Jr., "The Effect of Wives' Employment on the Mental Health of Married Men and Women," American Sociological Review 47, no. 5 (April 1982): 216-27. 16. There are various theories explaining why women both exhibit and are

expected to have these particular characteristics. Nancy Chodorow argues that these qualities occur as part of the developmental pattern of females and are attributable to the cultural fact that mothers are the primary child-care providers who interact differently with sons and daughters. Boys, in order to develop masculine identities, must turn away from their mothers, establishing themselves as different and separate. Because girls are the same sex as their mothers, they do not have to separate in the same way and, in fact, feminine gender is "embedded in an interpersonal relationship with their mothers," 177). (The Reproduction of Mothering [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978], As a result, "feminine personality comes to include a fundamental definition of self in relationship" (169), and is focused on relating and connecting to people. Women, according to Chodorow, have "'empathy' built into their primary definition of self" (167). Arguing from a different perspective, Alice H. Eagly suggests that stereotypes have developed about women as nurturant caretakers, better able to cope with a family's emotional needs, primarily because of their social roles as mothers and wives where such personal characteristics come more often into play. These stereotyped characteristics then come to be seen as both norms and expectations for female behavior, influencing the way that girls act and are expected to act (Sex Differences in Social Behavior: A Social-Role Interpretation [Hillsdale, N.J.: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 1987D. 17. Carol Gilligan, "Do Changes in Women's Rights Change Women's Moral Judgments?" in The Challenge of Change: Perspectives on Family, Work, and Education, ed. Matina Horner, Carol C. Nadelson, and Malkah T. Notman (New York: Plenum Press, 1983), 41. 18. Similarly, Myra Marx Ferree found, in a study of working-class families, that "women who hold paid jobs will be perceived as making a sacrifice for the family only when the family needs the income she earns." Even then, Ferree notes, to get household assistance "does not happen automatically

200

Notes

but is more or less successfully negotiated." Wives might threaten that they will quit working but this is effective in garnering help only if the family needs the income ("The View from Below: Women's Employment and Gender Equality in Working Class Families," in Women and the Family: Two Decades of Change, ed. Beth B. Hess and Marvin B. Sussman [New York: The Haworth Press, 1984] 65). 19. Myra Marx Ferree, "The Struggles of Superwoman," in Hidden Aspects of Women's Work, ed. Christine Bose, Roslyn Feldberg, and Natalie Sokoloff, with the Women and Work Research Group (New York: Praeger, 1987), 161-80. 20. Christopher Lasch, Haven in a Heartless World (New York: Basic Books, 1977), chap. I and passim; Daniel Yankelovich, New Rules (New York: Random House, 1981). 21. Studies have shown that this is a common pattern among young marrieds, particularly before children arrive. See Constantina Safilios-Rothschild, "Newly Married Young People Share Tasks Instead of a Discussion. Companionate Marriages and Sexual Inequality: Are They Compatible?" in Toward a Sociology of Women, ed. Constantina Safilios-Rothschild (Lexington, Mass.: Xerox College Publishing, 1972),63-70. 22. Husbands' reactions were found to be crucial in another study that evaluated the effect of husbands' personalities on the sharing of household tasks. Those men who on a personality scale were "relatively aggressive, dominant, and emotionally 'tough'" helped their wives less than those who were expressive and who, presumably, were more able to identify with the needs of others (Linda Nyquist, Karla Slivken, Janet T. Spence, and Robert L. Helmreich, "Household Responsibilities in Middle-Class Couples: The Contribution of Demographic and Personality Variables," Sex Roles 12, nos. Ih [1985]: 15-34)' 23. The significance of such perceptions is illustrated by another study of 489 couples that found that wives' perceptions of husbands' attitudes were decisive in determining the allocation of housework. If wives believed that their husbands expected them to do the housework, they ended up doing more of it (Hiller and Philliber, "The Division of Labor in Contemporary Marriage," 191-201). 24. Glenna Spitze, "Women's Employment and Family Relations: A Review," Journal of Marriage and the Family 50, no. 3 (August 1988): 595-618. 25. Paula England and Barbara Stanek Kilbourne also talk about wives' weaker bargaining position: "Women do not bargain as far toward the margins of their power as men do because of a greater valuation of altruism"

Notes

2

aI

("Markets, Marriages, and Other Mates: The Problem of Power," in Beyond the Marketplace: Rethinking Society and Economy, ed. Roger Friedland and A. F. Robertson [New York: Aldine, 1990], 163-88). Se~ also Paula England and George Farkas, Households, Employment, and Gender (New York: Aldine, 1986), 54-59, 96. 26. David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denny, The Lonely Crowd (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1953),23. 27. Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself (New York: Norton, 1955),24142 . 28. For exchange theory see Robert O. Blood and Donald M. Wolfe, Husbands and Wives (New York: Free Press, 1960); and John Scanzoni, Opportunity and the Family (New York: Free Press, 1970). Economists' ver-

sion of this theory, the new home economics, argues that each family would pragmatically try to achieve its greatest utility. Therefore, even if a wife worked she probably would make less money in the marketplace than her husband, so it made more sense for her to spend her time doing housework (Gary Becker, A Treatise on the Family [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981]). 29. England and Kilbourne, "Markets, Marriages, and Other Mates"; Nancy C. M. Hartsock, "Exchange Theory: Critique from a Feminist Standpoint," Current Perspectives in Social Theory 6 (1985): 57-70. Vanek also faults exchange theory for ignoring those cultural factors that produce different norms and opportunities for each sex ("Household Work, Wage Work, and Sexual Equality," 276). See also, Roberta M. Spalter-Roth, "Dollars, Dirt, and Time Alone: Struggles Over Living Standards in DualEarner Families," (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Washington, D. c., August 24, 1985). 30. Hertz, More Equal Than Others. 31. Aasta S. Lubin, Managing Success: High-Echelon Careers and Motherhood (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 51. 32. John Scanzoni has argued that women are not able to bargain for power within marriage because they make less money than their husbands and as "junior partners" do not have enough resources to exchange. (Sexual Bargaining: Power Politics in the American Marriage [Englewood Cliffs, N.].: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972], esp. 66-70). The limitations of this theory are evident from these two studies of highly paid wives. 33. Sarah Fenstermaker Berk, The Gender Factory: The Apportionment of Work in American Households (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), esp. 201208. Scott Coltrane argues that under some circumstances gender and the

Notes

202

division of domestic labor cease being intertwined. Coltrane studied twenty dual-worker couples, half of whom shared child care and housework. This sharing socializes husbands, Coltrane concludes, so that they begin to view themselves as competent care givers. As a result, gender is no longer the salient factor in defining household responsibility (Scott Coltrane, "Household Labor and the Routine Production of Labor," Social Problems 36, no. 5 [December 1989]: 473-90). 34. Eagly, Sex Differences in Social Behavior, 27. 35. Berk, The Gender Factory. 36. Hochschild, The Second Shift.

CHAPTER

7

I. Steven D. McLaughlin, Barbara D. Melber, John o. G. Billy, Denise M. Zimmerle, Linda D. Winges, and Terry R. Johnson, The Changing Lives ofAmerican Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 53-54, 58-59· Indicating the later age at marriage, between 1970 and 1984 the never-married percentage among twenty-five to twenty-nine-yearold women rose from 10.5 percent to 26 percent. This percentage is expected to increase. First-time brides had an average age of 21 in 1977 and nearly 24 in 1987, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1990, BI. 2. McLaughlin et aI., The Changing Lives of American Women, 56-58. 3. Joanne Miller, Carmi Schooler, Melvin L. Kohn, and Karen A. Miller, "Women and Work: The Psychological Effects of Occupational Conditions," American Journal of Sociology 85, no. I (1979): 66-94. For a discussion of the lower level of stress experienced by women who increase their participation in the labor force, see Elaine Wethington and Ronald C. Kessler, "Employment, Parental Responsibility, and Psychological Distress: A Longitudinal Study of Married Women," Journal of Family Issues 10, no. 4 (December 1989): 527-46. 4. Barbara F. Reskin and Heidi I. Hartmann, eds. Women's Work, Men's Work: Sex Segregation on the Job (Washington, D. c.: National Academy Press, 1986), esp. 53-56. 5. Barbara Bergmann, The Economic Emergence of Women (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 6. In an analysis of data from the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey, William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby confirm that employed wives favor family when balancing work and family identities ("Family Ties: Balancing

Notes

20 3

Commitments to Work and Family in Dual Earner Households," American Sociological Review 54 [October 1989]: 776-89). 7. Karen O. Dowd, "Relocating the Dual Career Couple," Journal of Career Planning and Employment 47, no. 2 (Winter 1987): 28-31; Carole Gould, "A Helping Hand for the 'Trailing Spouse,''' New York Times, February 22, 1987, III, II; Judith Martin and Gunther Stent, "Practice Nepotism, But Affirmatively," New York Times, May 19, 1988, A31; "Move Me, Move My Spouse: Relocating the Corporate Spouse," Business Week, November 16, 1985, 57-60. 8. Susan Contratto, "Psychology Views Mothers and Mothering, 18971980," in Feminist Revisions, ed. Vivian Patraka and Louise A. Tilly (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Women's Studies Program, 1983), 149-78; Nancy Felipe Russo, "The Motherhood Mandate," Journal of Social Issues 32, no. 3 (1976): 143-53· 9. Paula J. Caplan and Ian Hall-McCorquodale, "Mother-Blaming in Major Clinical Journals," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 55, no. 3 (July 1985): 345-51· 10. Nancy Chodorow and Susan Contratto, "The Fantasy of the Perfect Mother," in Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, ed. Barrie Thorne with Marilyn Yalom (New York: Longman, 1982), 54-75. II. Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 124, 129. 12. Although not as salient for this group, economic factors also can play a role because women, still found predominately in low-paying, low-status jobs, cannot afford to retire. The delayed retirement of women contrasts with the increasingly early retirement of men. In 1984 only a sixth of men 65 and over were in the labor force in contrast with 1950 when nearly half of them were. Women's retirement rates of those 65 and over have been comparatively steady, dropping from 10 percent in 1950 to 7.5 percent in 1984 (Glenn Collins, "As More Men Retire Early, More Women Work Longer," New York Times, April 3, 1986, CI, CI2). 13. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman's Life, 131.

CHAPTER

8

I. Linda Gordon, "What's New in Women's History," in Feminist Studies/Critical Studies, ed. Teresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 20-30, esp. 23-24. 2. Alice Kessler-Harris and Karen Brodkin Sacks, "The Demise of

20 4

Notes

Domesticity in America," III Women, Households, and the Economy, ed. Lourdes Beneria and Catharine R. Stimpson (New Brunswick, N.].: Rutgers University Press, I987), 65-84. 3. Seyla Benhabib, "The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory," in Women and Moral Theory, ed. E. Kittay and D. T. Meyers (Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, I987), I7l. 4. Lois Wladis Hoffman, "Effects of Maternal Employment in the TwoParent Family," American Psychologist 44, no. 2 (February I989): 283-92. 5. Janet G. Hunt and Larry L. Hunt, "Dual Career Families: Vanguard of the Future or Residue of the Past?" In Two Paychecks: Life in DualEarner Families, ed. Joan Aldous (Beverly Hills: Sage, I982), 47. For the pressures to conform to the requirements of an academic career see Arlie Hochschild, "Inside the Clockwork of Male Careers," in Women and the Power to Change, ed. Florence Howe (New York: McGraw Hill, I97I), 47-80. 6. Arlie Hochschild, "The Clockwork of Male Careers," 47-80; and Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Viking, I989), x-xi and passim. 7. In Sara Yogev's terms, what is happening is "a role expansion process" rather than a "role redefinition" ("Do Professional Women Have Egalitarian Marital Relationships?" Journal of Marriage and the Family 43, no. 4 [November I98I]: 87I). 8. In an eighteen-year panel study, daughters in I980 were found to have more egalitarian sex-role attitudes than their mothers had in I962. See, Arland Thornton, Duane F. Alwin, Donald Camburn, "Causes and Consequences of Sex-Role Attitudes and Attitude Change," American Sociological Review 48 (April I983): 2II-27. See also, Hoffman, "Effects of Maternal Employment in the Two-Parent Family."

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iNDEX ---0---

Accommodators, 8, 125- 133-40, 145-46, 148, 180 Adolescence, impact of, 21-22 AI, 22, 37, 96, 144-45> 154, 161-62, 168-69 "American Woman, The." See Life (1956 special issue on "The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles") Ann, 7, 20-21, 39, 69-70, 87, 103, 105-6, 1I0-1I, 120, 134-35157-58, 164, 169-70, 175 Architecture school, 45-48 Arnold, 127-30

Brown, Stephanie. See Stephanie Butler, George. See George Butler, Jo. See Jo

Baby and Child Care (Spock), 59 Barbara, 20, 43, 44, 109-1I, 161, 167, 176 Berk, Sarah Fenstermaker, 147 Betsy, 40, 68-69, 130 Blair, Helen. See Helen Blair, John. See John Bob, 41, 162, 172-73 Breines, Wini, 3 Brothers, parents' attitudes toward, 18-20 21 9

Career(s): advice on, in early years, 20-21; architecture as, 25-27; art, 19; aspirations, development of, 103-18; balancing family life and, 155-62; college teaching as, 50-55, 57-58, 109-1I , 1I3-14; engmeenng as, 25> 47, 100101; husbands' attitudes toward wives', 170-73; impact of, 15052; law as, 105-9; medicine as, H-56; nursing as, 38; priorities, changes in, 164-73; psychology as, 30, 59-60; science as, 28, 59, 61-62; two-career families, problems of, 44, 183-86; two-person career, 36, 54, 64 Chessman, Cynthia. See Cynthia Chessman, Joe. See Joe "Cinderella complex," 40-41 Claudia, 12, 16, 18-21, 72-73, 9193, 103, 138-39, 163-64, 171-72

220

College culture in 1950S and 1960s, 35-36,43-48, 52, 54-55, 63 College years, 35-64 Companionate marriage, 97-98 Contented Housewives, 7-8, 6667, 69, 70-74 Contingency strategy, 37-40 Cynthia, 41-44, 70-72, 93-95, 102-3, 151, 166-67, 170 Dave, 95-97 Debbie, 57-58, 63, 68, 82, 90, 103, 10 5, 135-36, 150-51, 156, 172, 176, 184 DeVault, Marjorie L., 122-23 Discontented Housewives, 7-8, 66-68, 74-83, 850 89, 95-103, 125, 151, 175, 180 Divorce rates, impact of, 86-87 "Doing gender," 3-4, 147 Dorothy, 6, 27-29, 32, 59, 61-63, 69, 83, 90, 105-7, 152-55, 158- 60 Employment: discrimination, 15255; motivations of study participants, 88-103; opportunities in 1970s, 86-87 Equalizers, 8, 12s. 140-46, 148, 173, 180 Eric, 138-39 Evelyn, 12,40-41,44, 74, 76-77, 112-13, 138-39, 1571 162, 172-73 Exchange theory, 145-46 Family life: 121-25; resistance to change in, 121-25, 182-84; responsibility for, 8, 123-25 Farnham, Marynia F., 4 Fathers' influence, 21-22, 24-32

Index "Fear of success," 43 Female identity, 49, 181-82, 185 Feminine Mystique, The (Friedan), 80 Financial support of husbands, 37-3 8 Flood, Barbara. See Barbara Flood, Tim. See Tim Fox, Greer Litton, 16-17 Frances, 7, 22, 37-38, 75-76, 96, 13 2-33, 144-45, 154, 161-62, 168-69, 177 Frank, 131-32 Friedan, Betty, 77 Fuller, Arnold. See Arnold Fuller, Ruth. See Ruth Gail, 31, 75, 96-98, 103, 155-58, 160, 175 "Gender factory," 147 Gender role pressures, 15-20, 6263,65 George, 55-56, 137-38, 161, 169 Gerson, Kathleen, 89 Gilligan, Carol, 123 Goetz, Ann. See Ann Goetz, Vic. See Vic Gold, Dave. See Dave Gold, Marilyn. See Marilyn "Good girls," 16-18 Gordon, 53-54, 65, 107-8, 169 Heilbrun, Carolyn G., 31-32, 177-78 Helen, 17-18, 73-74, 94-95, 14144, 150, 173 Hertz, Rosanna, 146-47 Higgins-Trenk, Ann, 23 Hochschild, Arlie, 148

Index Housework: II9-48; children's help with, 128-31, 137, 142; division of labor, II9-20; meaning of, for men and women, 12225, 146-48; wives' strategies for obtaining husbands' "help" with, 12 5-46 Hunt, Janet G., 183 Hunt, Larry L., 183 Huston-Stein, Aletha, 23 Janet, 9, 38, 90-91, 103, II4, II618, 140-41, 143, lSI, 173, 178 Jeff, 58, 135-36, 172 Jerry, 99, 167-68 , 171 Jo, 20, 55-57, 63, 74, 82, 103-5, 137-38, 154, 157-58, 160-61, 169, 18 4 Joe, 166, 170 John, 141-44, 173 Johnson, Betsy. See Betsy Julia, 7, 22, 39, 48-55> 63, 65-66, 105-9, 151-52, 169, 174, 176, 18 3-84 Karen, 12-13, 21-22, 78-81, 83, 87, 99, 103, III, II3-14, II8, 167-68, 171, 175 Ken, 75, 98, 155-56 Larson, Frank. See Frank Larson, Susan. See Susan Lee, Gordon. See Gordon Lee, Julia. See Julia Life (1956 special issue on "The American Woman: Her Achievements and Troubles"), 3 Lonely Crowd, The (Riesman), 3 Long-Termers (Contented House-

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wives), 8, 67, 70-74, 89,91-95, 102, 175> 180 Lubin, Aasta S., 147 Lundberg, Ferdinand, 4 McCarthy, Senator Joseph, 2, 4 McIntosh, Claudia. See Claudia McIntosh, Eric. See Eric Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The (Wilson),4 Marilyn, 17, 40 , 95-97, 126-27, 176

Marriage: long-term, x, 9, 183; pressure to marry, 32, 38-40, 41, 60,63 Martin, AI. See Al Martin, Frances. See Frances Mason, Janet. See Janet Mason, Neil. See Neil Masters, Jerry. See Jerry Masters, Karen. See Karen May, Elaine Tyler, 5 May, Rollo, 144 Media influences, 15 Michael, 78, 98, II2, 165-66, 171 Modern Woman: The Lost Sex (Lundberg and Farnham), 4-5 Motherhood: changes in, in 1970s, 86-87; ideology of, 58-60,67, 74-75,83, 174-75; midlife reflections on, 174-75; pressures for, 60-63; reaction to, 66-83; realities of, 66 Mothers of study participants, II-19, 24-3 0 Murphy, Bob. See Bob Murphy, Evelyn. See Evelyn Nancy, 9, 13, 15, 23, 72, 87-88 , 91-

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Nancy (cant.) 92, n4-16, 122, 150, 153, 162-64, 175 Nash, Gail. See Gail Nash, Ken. See Ken Negotiators, 8, 120, 125-33, 1350 139, 145-46, 148, 155 Neil, 91, 140-41, 143, 173 1950S, ix-x, 1-5, n; college culture in, 35-36, 43-48, p, 54-55; erosion of masculinity in, 3-4; gender discrimination in, 4655 ; gender relationships in, 2-3; heterosexuality in, x, 3-5; homosexuality in, 4; marriage expectations in, 7; motherhood expectations in, 7; shifts in demographic indicators in, 2 1970s, 85-89 1980s: changes in female employment in, 63, 149; demographic changes in, 149 Nontraditionalists, 6, II, 23-33, 37, 45-48, 59, 63, 68-69, 74, 81-83, 101, 103-50 180-81 Oakley, Ann, 66-67, 82 Organization Man, The (Wilson), 4 Out of synch, 162-64 Papanek, flanna, 36 Pearlin, Leonard, 91 Post-World War II period. See 1950S Provider role, 160-61 Race and class privileges, xi, 70, 88-89, 181 Reed, Michael. See Michael

Index Reed, Virginia. See Virginia Religion, influence of, 16, 20 Richardson, Nancy. See Nancy Riesman, David, 3, 143 Role disenchantment, 91 Ruth, 29-30, 32, 59-61, 74, 81-82, 101-5, 121, 127-30, 151-52, 174, 176 Samson, Debbie. See Debbie Samson, Jeff. See Jeff Sandra, 24-27, 32, 45-46, 48, 100, 103, n8, 154 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 54 Self-doubt, 40-450 51-52 Self-esteem, increase in, 150-P Self-fulfillment movement, impact of,88 Smith, Dorothy, 64 Socialization throughout the life course, xi, n8-19 Spock, Benjamin, 59 Stephanie, 151, 176, 178 Stevenson, Adlai, 36 "Superwomen," 125-26, 129 Susan, I, 7, 13-14, 124, 130-32, 174, 176 Thompson, Sandra. See Sandra Tim, 44 Time-Outers (Contented flousewives), 67-68, 83, 89-91, 95, 102, no, 140, 180 Traditionalists,6, n-24, 31, 33, 37-40, 45, 48, 63, 69, 75, 95-96, 1050 180-81 Two-career families. See Careers Two-person career. See Careers

Index Vic, 134-35, 164 Virginia, 26-27, 32, 45-48, 7778, 83, 98-99, 100-101, 111-12, 118, 120, 124, 130, 136-37, 151, 155-56, 165-66, 171, 186 Volunteer work, 72, 74

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Wilson, Sloan, 4 Withers, Dorothy. See Dorothy Women's movement, 8, 12, 85-88 Writing a Woman's Life (Heilbrun), 177

Yankelovich, Daniel, 88 West, Candance, 4 Whyte, William, 3

Zimmerman, Don H., 4